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AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES 

Edited by 

Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph. D. 






<Ibe Hmerican Crisis Biographies 

Edited by Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, Ph.D. With the 
counsel and advice of Professor John B. McMaster, of 
the University of Pennsylvania. 

Each i2mo, cloth, with frontispiece portrait. Price 
$1.25 net; by mail, $1.37. 

These biographies will constitute a complete and comprehensive 
history of the great American sectional struggle in the form of readable 
and authoritative biography. The editor has enlisted the co-operation 
of many competent writers, as will be noted from the list given below. 
An interesting feature of the undertaking is that the series is to be im- 
partial, Southern writers having been assigned to Southern subjects and 
Northern writers to Northern subjects, but all will belong to the younger 
generation of writers, thus assuring freedom from any suspicion of war- 
time prejudice. The Civil War will not be treated as a rebellion, but as 
the great event in the history of our nation, which, after forty years, it 
is now clearly recognized to have been. 

Now ready : 
Abraham Lincoln. By Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer. 
Thomas H. Benton. By Joseph M. Rogers. 
David G. Farragut. By John R. Spears. 
William T. Sherman. By Edward Robins. 
Frederick Douglass. By Booker T. Washington. 
Judah P. Benjamin. By Pierce Butler. 
Robert E Lee. By Philip Alexander Bruce. 
Jefferson Davis. By Prof. W. E. Dodd. 
Alexander H. Stephens. By Louis Pendleton. 
John C. Calhoun. By Gaillard Hunt. 
11 Stonewall" Jackson. By Henry Alexander White. 
John Brown. By W. E. Burghardt Dubois. 
Charles Sumner. By Prof. George H. Haynes. 

In preparation : 

Daniel Webster. By Prof. C. H. Van Tyne. 
William Lloyd Garrison. By Lindsay Swift. 
William H. Seward. By Edward Everett Hale, Jr. 
Stephen A. Douglas. By Prof. Henry Parker Willis. 
Thaddeus Stevens. By Prof. J. A. Woodburn. 
Andrew Johnson. By Prof. Walter L. Fleming. 
Henry Clay. By Thomas H. Clay. 
Ulysses S. Grant. By Prof. Franklin S. Edmonds. 
Edwin M. Stanton. By Edwin S. Corwin. 
Jay Cooke. By Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer. 




C?A <^~£s * ' Ci^y^y^r^ 



AMERICAN CRISIS BIOGRAPHIES 



Charles Sumner 



by 



cA 



£t 



GEORGE H. HAYNES, Ph.D. 

Professor of History in the Worcester Polytechnic Institute 




PHILADELPHIA 

GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 







iti ?ifr* 



\ v 






Copyright, 1909, by 
George W. Jacobs & Company 

Published November, jgo<? 



All rights reserved 
Printed in U. S. A. 



PREFACE 

Time has dealt very differently with the leading 
characters in the great drama of the nineteenth 
century. At the end of the war, in the opinion of 
the best informed and most judicial historian of the 
period, Abraham Lincoln and Charles Sumner were 
" the two most influential men in public life." On 
the very day of his death, the President intimated 
that the thwarting of his reconstruction policy had 
been due to Sumner's opposition. 

To-day Lincoln's name is a household word ; his 
memory is revered hardly less in the South than in 
the North ; the new generation understands and ap- 
preciates him far better than did the men among 
whom his work was done. But Sumner's figure has 
been crowded into the background. Ask intelligent 
men of affairs born since 1860 for an account of 
his character and career, and few will recall more 
than that he was an anti-slavery orator, whose 
assault by Brooks in the Senate chamber greatly in- 
tensified the bitterness between North and South. 
What manner of impress Sumner is making upon 
yet younger America was tested a few months ago 
in the examination of applicants for admission to 
a Massachusetts college. Not one in ten of those 
boys in the commonwealth which Sumner had so 
long and so honorably represented, showed any in- 
telligent knowledge of the man. One replied : 
" Charles Sumner was always held in respect even 



6 PREFACE 

by the people of the South. Fort Sumner, Charles- 
town, was named in his honor," — an honor which 
several of the other papers also accorded him ! Of 
six histories of the United States in use in leading 
secondary schools, two leave Sumner insensible at 
Brooks's feet, two others have not a word to say of 
any act of Sumner's after the assault, while the 
others go little further than to state the bare and 
barren facts that he held tenaciously to a peculiar 
theory of reconstruction, that he strove to secure 
equal civil rights for the freedmen, and that he 
quarreled with Grant. 

Some reasons for this lessened interest in Sumner 
are not far to seek. Unlike Lincoln, he outlived 
his best days. His most characteristic and benefi- 
cent labors belonged to the epoch closed by the war ; 
their fruits were merged in its triumphs. His later 
years brought misfortunes in full train : domestic 
sorrow, racking illness, the loss of friends and cease- 
less struggle over the problems of reconstruction, 
with some of which he was little fitted to cope. Sum- 
ner had his foibles and faults ; no attempt has here 
been made to gloss them over. He made mistakes, 
some of which were fraught with disaster. Never- 
theless, I believe that he deserves of his country a 
more grateful remembrance than has been accorded 
him, and that both a true historical perspective and 
the inculcation of virile American ideals call upon 
the writers and teachers of history to bring Sumner 
forward into clearer light. 

The task of writing a brief biography of Sumner 
is made difficult not by the lack of material, but 



PKEFACE 7 

rather by its abundance. From the hour of his 
election to the Senate, Sumner never doubted that 
he was an historic personage. He devoted an enor- 
mous amount of time to editing his Works: in 
these fifteen volumes of his speeches he meant that 
we should read his life as he saw it related to the 
great events in which he was taking part. Thou- 
sands of letters written by him are preserved. In 
the Sumner Collection in the library of Harvard 
University are 40,000 letters received by him from 
men of leading in many lands, as well as news- 
paper clippings and documents in rich profusion. 

Sumner was fortunate in having as his biographer 
Mr. Edward L. Pierce, who for thirty years had 
been his intimate friend. His Memoir and Letters of 
Charles Sumner is a marvel of research hardly equaled 
in painstaking conscientiousness and completeness 
by any other biography of recent years. Its four 
bulky volumes represent nineteen years of almost un- 
remitting labor, and contain but a quarter part less 
reading matter than the Nicolay-Hay biography of 
Lincoln. But the very completeness of Mr. Pierce's 
work bars its use by any but the specialist. It is 
' ' conceived on a scale which assumes in the reader an 
interest in the subject, and an indifference to toil, 
commensurate with those of the author. . . . 
Life simply does not suffice for literature laid out on 
such a Brobdingnagian scale ; all sense of proportion 
is absent from it." 1 Mr. Pierce himself justified 
the scope of his work on the ground that a com- 
plete biography would prove "a thesaurus which 

1 C. F. Adams, Lee at Appomattox and Other Papers, p. 147. 



8 PKEFACE 

can be drawn upon by the authors of briefer lives. ' ' 
Certain it is that more than one biographer of 
Sumner has sunk his shafts deep in Pierce's Memoir 
while paying surprisingly scanty royalties of ac- 
knowledgment for the ore extracted. 

Whatever value may be possessed by any later 
life of Sumner must consist far less in its discovery 
of new material than in its perspective, its point of 
view. Thirty -five years, a full generation, have 
passed since Sumner's death. His work has been 
put to the test in the searching fires of reconstruc- 
tion. Day by day our dealings with the peoples of 
our new insular possessions are bringing into ques- 
tion doctrines which Sumner held to be absolute 
and impregnable. Experience in South Africa is 
proving to-day how rapidly trust may make friends 
out of conquered foes. The time may have come 
for a new attempt to tell the story of Sumner's life 
and to appraise his service. 

Unfortunately the second volume of " The Letters 
and Journals of Samuel Gridley Howe " and " The 
Diary of Gideon Welles" were not available until 
most of this book was in type. 

Among the many who have helped me from their 
personal knowledge of Sumner, I wish to mention 
here with special gratitude Dr. Edward Everett 
Hale, whom we all mourn, Dr. Samuel A. Green, 
President Andrew D. White, and Mr. Arnold B. 
Johnson, who during most of Sumner's public life 
was his secretary and intimate friend. 

G. H. H. 



CONTENTS 



OF NA 



Chronology . 
I. Parentage and Youth . 
- II. Choice of a Profession 

III. European Travel . 

IV. " No. 4 Court Street " 
V. " The True Grandeur 

tions" .... 
VI. Sumner' s Enlistment in the Anti 
Slavery Ranks . 
VII. Massachusetts and the Compro 
mise : Sumner's Election to the 

Senate 

VIII. Senate Beginnings: " Freedom 
National, Slavery Sectional" 
IX. Political Revolution in Massa- 
chusetts 

X. "The Crime Against Kansas," 

and the Brooks Assault . 
XI. In Quest of Health 
XII. "The Barbarism of Slavery " . 

XIII. War Problems : The Trent Af- 

fair 

XIV. Sumner and Lincoln 

XV. Johnson and Reconstruction 
XVI. Sumner and Grant : The San 

Domingo Issue . 
XVII. Sumner and Grant : The Treaty 

of Washington . 



11 
15 
31 
45 
64 

78 

91 

115 

138 

159 

188 
221 
231 

247 
276 
295 

329 

354 



10 


CONTENTS 




XVIII. 


Sumner's Personality and Char- 






acteristics 


384 


XIX. 


Civil Eights and the Battle- 
Flag Resolution : Closing 






Scenes 


412 


XX. 


Sumner's Leadership . 


438 




Bibliography .... 


452 






454 




CHRONOLOGY 

1811 — Born in Boston, Mass., January 6th. 

1826 — Enters Harvard College. Is graduated, 1830. Student 
in Harvard Law School, 1831-1833. 

1834 — Visits Washington, and is strongly repelled by political 
life as a career. Admitted to the bar, and begins prac- 
tice in Boston. Edits legal journals and reports. Inti- 
mate with W. E. Channing and Francis Lieber. 

1837-1840 — European tour, which immensely broadens Sum- 
ner's horizon, awakens his appreciation of art, gives him 
facile command of French, German and Italian, a knowl- 
edge of the politics and jurisprudence and an intimate 
acquaintance with many of the leaders in public life and 
in letters in England, France and Germany, — an indis- 
pensable preparation for his unsuspected career. 

1842 — Maintains the " right of inquiry." Cooperates with Dr. 
Channing in condemning Webster's treatment of the 
Creole case. 

1843 — Defends Mackenzie's action in the Somers mutiny. Be- 
comes instructor in the Law School. Contributes fre- 
quently to the Law Reporter. 

1845 — Cooperates with Horace Mann for the improvement of 
the system of public education in Massachusetts. July 
4th, delivers the city oration, "The True Grandeur of 
Nations, " which straightway gives him more than national 
fame as an orator, and as a champion of Freedom and 
of Peace. Phi Beta Kappa Address at Harvard. Gains 
prominence as lecturer and reformer. Prison Discipline 
debates give valuable training, but arouse enmity. 

1847 — Denounces R. C. Winthrop's vote in Congress on the 
Mexican War bill. The controversy puts Sumner for- 
ward as the champion of the Conscience Whigs, and an- 
tagonizes conservatives. Is nominated for Congress, but 
withdraws his name. 



12 CHEOXOLOGY 

1848 — Active in the organization of the Free Soil party, in re- 
volt at the Whig nomination Of Taylor. 

1851 — Put forward by the Free Soilers in coalition with Demo- 
crats, for the United States Senate. Elected by majority 
of one vote, after a deadlock in the legislature of more 
than three months. Takes seat in Senate. In first 
speech — a tribute to Kossuth — he opposes any belliger- 
ent intervention in European affairs. 

1852 — In first formal Senate speech, arraigns Fugitive Slave 
Law: " Freedom national : Slavery sectional." 

1854 — Opposes repeal of Missouri Compromise. Vindicates pe- 
tition of New England clergy. Opposition angers South- 
ern senators. Assails Knownothiugism. 

1856 — Angered by Sumner's speech, " The Crime Against Kan- 
sas," Preston S. Brooks assaults him in the Senate 
chamber, May 22d. After months of invalidism Sumner 
is welcomed home, November 3d, as the martyr of free 
speech, by the governor of the commonwealth, the mayor 
of Boston, and a vast throng of citizens. 1856-1859 
spent in disheartening struggle for health. Meantime 
Massachusetts reelects him to the Senate. 

1859-1860— Return to the Senate. "The Barbarism of Slav- 
ery." Takes the stump for Lincoln. 

1861-1862 — Unyielding in opposition to all schemes of com- 
promise. Made chairman of Foreign Relations Commit- 
tee. In October, 1861, the first statesman of prominence 
to demand the policy of emancipation. In Trent case, 
insists on surrender of Mason and Slidell. Puts forward 
his theory of reconstruction by Congress in states which 
had " become felo de se." 

1863 — Third election to Senate. Puts stop to letters of marque 
and reprisal. Blocks resolutions which would have em- 
broiled United States with France. Important corre- 
spondence with Bright, Cobden and the Duke of Argyll. 
Cooper Institute speech on " Foreign Relations." 

1864 — Struggles to secure equal rights, including equal suf- 
frage, for colored people. Initiates movement for civil 
service reform. Champions Lincoln's reelection, after 
11 the Chicago treason." Secures Chase's appointment as 
Chief-Justice. 



CHKONOLOGY 13 

1865 — Opposes retaliation in war, and imposes restraints in the 
interest of civilization. Obstructs Lincoln's plan of re- 
construction. Accompanies the presidential party to 
Richmond. Is at Lincoln's death-bed. Delivers the 
eulogy upon Lincoln before Boston city government. 

1865-1869 — Struggles over reconstruction. Advocates equal 
suffrage, free homesteads and free schools for Negroes. 
Death of mother. Marriage. Chief supporter of Alaska 
purchase. Establishes new home in Washington. 
Heartily supports Johnson's impeachment and con- 
viction. 

1869-1871 — Fourth election to the Senate. Opposes Fifteenth 
Amendment. Prevents confirmation of Stewart as Sec- 
retary of the Treasury. Approves Motley's appointment 
as Minister to England. In speech against ratification 
of Johnson-Clarendon Convention, sets forth ''national 
claims" against England. Opposes annexation of San 
Domingo, and thus antagonizes Grant and Fish. Re- 
moved from chairmanship of Foreign Relations Commit- 
tee. Advocates ratification of Treaty of Washington. 
Persistent in urging Civil Rights Bill. 

1872 — Opposes Grant's renomination, but takes no part in fur- 
thering the Liberal Republican movement. Arraigns 
Grant in the Senate. Supports Greeley. Last journey 
to Europe. Illness compels absence from Senate. 
Presents "Battle-Flag" resolution. Censured by Mas- 
sachusetts legislature. 

1873— Defeat of movement to rescind censure. Sumner urges 
justice to Spain in Virginius case. Makes last appeal for 
Civil Rights Bill. 

1874 — Massachusetts legislature rescinds censure. In last 
speech in Senate, Sumner urges national, instead of in- 
ternational, commemoration of American independence. 
Illness. March 10th — his last day in Senate — is present 
when the rescinding resolution is presented. Dies, 
March 11th. Buried in Mount Auburn, March 16th. 
Commemoration in Congress, April 27th. Lamar's 
tribute. 



CHARLES SUMNER 



CHAPTER I 

PARENTAGE AND YOUTH 

Charles Sumner caine but slowly to a knowl- 
edge of himself. His life was more than half spent 
before he recognized his real task. The career 
which then suddenly opened before him was a sur- 
prise even to himself, yet it was no accident. From 
the beginning, both heredity and environment, 
physical, intellectual and moral, had been develop- 
ing in him a unique combination of powers of mind 
and heart. When the crisis came which called him 
to service, it found him fully armed for the fight. 

William Sumner, the first of Charles Suinner's 
American ancestors, was a native of St. Edburg in 
the county of Oxford, England. At the age of 
thirty he moved with his wife and three sons to the 
town of Dorchester in the Massachusetts Bay Col- 
ony. In this little community, which had been 
founded only five or six years, William Sumner 
soon came to be a man of influence. He was ad- 
mitted to the freedom of the colony in 1637 and ac- 
quired a] grant of land. He was elected to impor- 
tant offices in town and colony, and for many years 



16 CHARLES SUMNER 

acted as a commissioner to " try and issue small 
causes." From him in the seventh generation 
descended Charles Sumner. 

With two exceptions the intervening ancestors 
need not here be noted. These Sumners of Dor- 
chester and Milton were generally farmers, in 
moderate circumstances, and with families of 
patriarchal numbers. Among all these sturdy 
forebears of Charles Sumner there is but one to 
whom life offered much of variety or romance. 
Charles Sumner's grandfather bore the singularly 
inappropriate name of Job. When he was seven- 
teen years old, his father died, leaving a 
widow and twelve children. After working a 
year upon a neighbor's farm, Job Sumner de- 
termined to get a liberal education. The prepara- 
tion cost him a hard struggle, but he finally secured 
admission to the freshman class of Harvard College. 
Six months had not passed when the news of Lexing- 
ton entered this scholarly retreat. Forthwith the 
college betook itself to Concord, in order that its 
dormitories might be turned into barracks for the 
Continental Army. But books had lost their lure 
for Job Snniner ; he remained behind, and joined 
the army, receiving the rank of ensign. As a re- 
ward for distinguished service in command of one 
of the armed vessels on Lake Cham plain, he was 
presently made a captain. In 1779 it fell to him 
for some time to have charge of the guard over 
Major Andre, who was then under sentence of 
death, and for whom he came to have a sincere 



PARENTAGE AND YOUTH 17 

regard. In 1783 Major Job Sumner was in com- 
mand of the forces which guarded New York dur- 
ing the evacuation of the British troops, and at the 
end of that year it was from Sumner's detachment 
that Washington received the last military salute 
of the Revolutionary Army. Though he had never 
entered her class-rooms since the outbreak of the 
war, in 1785 Harvard College was proud to enroll 
him in the class to which he had belonged, and to 
confer the degree of Master of Arts upon " Major 
Job Sumner, . . . who, during the war, be- 
haved with reputation as a man and as an officer. " 

In 1785 he was appointed by Congress "a com- 
missioner for settling the accounts between the Con- 
federation and the State of Georgia," a task which 
occupied him until the time of his death in 1789, 
aged thirty-five. At his funeral in New York the 
regard for him as a public servant was shown by 
the attendence of the Vice-President, the Secretary 
of War, and the senators and representatives in Con- 
gress from Massachusetts. 

Job Sumner was a red-blooded man. He loved 
the life of a soldier. He made friends readily, 
entertained freely, and was easily imposed upon, 
his generosity of mind and of purse leading to his be- 
ing seriously embarrassed through imprudent loans 
to friends. That he touched life at many points is 
indicated by the variety of his reading. In those 
days of few books, his collection included an eight- 
volume edition of Shakespeare, "Don Quixote," 
" Junius," " The Wealth of Nations," " Anecdotes 



18 CHARLES SUMNER 

of Dr. Johnson," a "History of England," and 
Lord Chesterfield's " Letters to his Son." The last 
is significant, for in this brave, adventurous and 
capable man nothing is more admirable than the 
anxious solicitude and shrewd sense which appear 
in the Chesterfieldian letters written to the teachers 
to whom he had entrusted his son's education. 

From the academy at Andover this son, Charles 
Pinckney Sumner, entered Harvard College and 
was duly graduated in 1796. A number of effu- 
sions, for the most part in stiff and stilted verse, 
are the principal memorials of his student days. 
They deal with lofty themes and show genuine 
fineness of feeling. Four lines from "The Com- 
pass" are significant, for they hold up the very 
ideals, peace and freedom and equal rights, to which 
his famous son's life was to be devoted : 

"More true inspir'd, we antedate the time 
When futile war shall cease thro' every clime ; 
No sanction'd slavery Afric's sous degrade, 
But equal rights shall equal earth pervade.'' 

Upon leaving college, the young man seemed to 
have no decided bent ; he taught school for a few 
years, then studied law, and in the year 1799 took 
a desk in the office of Josiah Quincy. Shrewd Job 
Sumner had urged that at the academy his son 
should learn "eloquence and manners, as well 
as wisdom and the languages," adding, "I lay 
great stress on the first two accomplishments, be- 
cause I think them very essential, and by far the 



PARENTAGE AND YOUTH 19 

most difficult for Charles to attain. " Conscien- 
tious in all things, he did attain eloquence and 
manners, but both were heavy and came only with 
obvious effort. Like John Quincy Adams and 
many other young men, he broke away from the 
Federalist party ; his speeches and letters show 
that the feeling which chiefly dominated his poli- 
tics at this period was opposition to the aristo- 
cratic and sectionalizing tendencies of the Federal- 
ists, who seemed to him " disposed to erect New 
England into a separate government." In later 
life, perhaps because of his official position, he 
ceased to take much interest in party politics. 

In the spring of 1810 Mr. Sumner was married to 
Relief Jacob, in the modest frame house which he 
had hired at the southeast corner of what are now 
Revere and Irving Streets, in Boston. Here all but 
the youngest of their nine children were born. 
Years later they removed to No. 20 Hancock 
Street, which remained the home of the family 
until 1867. 

Mr. Sumner's legal practice was not successful. 
He was deeply learned in the law, but his pains- 
taking study and note-taking did not fit him for 
effective court or office practice. As a result, he 
came to be mainly a collector of small bills. By 
1819 his children numbered five ; his income was 
making no gain, and the problem of educating his 
sons and daughters became a pressing one. With 
a hope of bettering his finances, he dropped his 
practice to become a deputy sheriff, — an office 



20 CHAKLES SUMNEK 

which, however, then yielded less than one thousand 
dollars a year. The turn in the tide of his affairs 
came in 1825 when Governor Lincoln appointed 
him Sheriff of Suffolk County, a position which he 
continued to hold by appointment of successive gov- 
ernors until a few days before his death in 1839. 
He had nothing of Job Sumner's ease and cordial 
friendliness with strangers, and neither courted nor 
won popularity ; but men upon the bench bore wit- 
ness to his fidelity and efficiency, and the governors 
kept him in office because of his sterling merit, not- 
withstanding some popular opposition. 

For his services as sheriff, including the custody 
of the county jail, he received from 82,000 to 83,000 
a year, which enabled the family to live far more 
liberally and even to make some accumulation. He 
took his new duties, like everything else, most 
seriously ; he delved into the remote history of 
the development of the office both in England and 
America, and showed true Sumner tenacity in 
maintaining with dignity his own opinion as to the 
nature and scope of the sheriff's powers in opposi- 
tion to the view taken by the Supreme Court. 

He renounced his early connection with the 
Masons, and took an active part in the anti-Ma- 
sonic movement. The temperance question aroused 
his interest, and he lectured upon it, denouncing the 
licensing of liquor-selling as immoral. He was an 
early and urgent advocate of public school improve- 
ment. But the cause which appealed to him most 
strongly was the anti slavery movement. He did 



PARENTAGE AND YOUTH 21 

not publicly ally himself with the Abolitionists, but 
he was outspoken in his condemnation of slavery, 
and unusually far-sighted as to its consequences. A 
neighbor recalled his remarking as early as 1820, 
" Our children's heads will some day be broken on 
a cannon-ball on this question." In private and in 
official intercourse he treated negroes with studied 
courtesy and kindness. Charles Sumner's extreme 
views of human equality came naturally to the son 
of a man who condemned social aversion to the 
negro and the exclusion of negro children from the 
public schools j who said that he should be l i en- 
tirely willing to sit on the bench with a negro judge " j 
and who put himself on record against the law pro- 
hibiting the intermarriage of blacks and whites. 

With Sheriff Sumner religion was less a matter of 
creed than of honorable living. In his early years 
he attended Trinity (Protestant Episcopal) Church, 
but after 1825 the family occupied a pew in King's 
Chapel (Unitarian). He had no sympathy with 
sectarianism, and condemned in word and practice 
the fanatical antagonism of his day against Roman 
Catholics. The dominant note in his character was 
an almost morbid conscientiousness. In his home, 
not less than in his official duties, he was formal 
and punctilious ; his children's manners and educa- 
tion received his anxious care. He aroused in them 
his own love of history and of varied knowledge. 
But, especially in his later years, life took on a 
gloomy tone. He gained no new friends and " his 
rigid and cheerless nature was not one which makes 



22 CHARLES SUMNER 

a happy home." The love which he received from 
his children had more of dutifulness than of warmth. 

Upon the maternal side, the first of Charles Sum- 
ner's American ancestors was Nicholas Jacob, of 
Hingham, England, who established himself in 
Hingham, Massachusetts, in 1633. From him de- 
scended a line of thrifty farmers, the fourth of whom 
was David Jacob, Sr., a man of broad acres, who 
was often called to office, and who served during the 
Revolution on the Committee of Public Safety. His 
granddaughter, Relief Jacob, at the time when 
Charles Pinckney Sumner married her, had for 
some years been supporting herself as a seamstress, 
and from this early experience she brought to her 
new home a talent for shrewd household manage- 
ment, much needed where the income was so small 
and the family rapidly growing. Mrs. Sumner was 
a most devoted mother. It fell to her lot to care for 
three of her daughters through long and fatal ill- 
nesses ; of her nine children but two, Charles and 
his youngest sister, survived her. Yet through her 
long and arduous life she kept her poise as a woman 
of strength and cheer, the family's unfailing source 
of help and encouragement. 

Charles Sumner and a twin sister were born Jan- 
uary 6, 1811, the eldest of Sheriff Sumner's nine 
children. The Boston of his boyhood days he re- 
called in after years as a "neat, trim, well-ordered 
place " of about 40,000 inhabitants. It was a pros- 
perous and conservative community, with Faneuil 
Hall still the scene of its town-meeting government. 



PARENTAGE AND YOUTH 23 

Its population was homogeneous as compared with 
that of to-day, and wide social contrasts were un- 
known. As a man of education and a holder of re- 
sponsible office, Charles Pinckney Sumner asso- 
ciated with cultivated people, but his narrow means 
and possibly his politics constituted a barrier to the 
family's moving among those of most wealth and in- 
fluence. 

The first steps in the boy's education were taken 
in a private infant school taught by his mother's 
sister in a room of the Sumner house. It was at first 
the father's intention to have him taught only in 
English branches, that he might the sooner be fitted 
to eke out the family's slender income. But when 
he found that with chance pennies the boy had 
bought from a classmate some elementary Latin 
books and had been studying them to good purpose, 
he relented, and in August, 1821, Charles was en- 
tered for a five-year course at the Boston Latin 
School. Among his schoolmates here were not a 
few with whom he was to be closely associated in 
later life : Robert C. Winthrop, George S. Hillard, 
James Freeman Clarke, Samuel F. Smith, and Wen- 
dell Phillips. They remembered him as an over- 
grown and a rather awkward boy, — " Gawky " 
Sumner, the fellows dubbed him. He was pure of 
mind and speech, thoughtful and retiring, fond 
of his fellows, and well liked by them. He cared 
little for most sports, but was enthusiastic over 
swimming. He was always a bookworm, and, al- 
though his standing in his class was rather low, he 



24 CHARLES SUMNER 

frequently surprised the boys with stray bits of in- 
formation which he had come upon in his browsing. 
Perhaps at the instigation of his father, who was an 
inveterate filler of note-books, at fourteen years of 
age he compiled a summary of English history from 
Caesar's invasion to 1801, in nearly ninety manuscript 
pages. It is a relief to note that he was still enough 
of a boy to embellish it with the title : " A Chro- 
nological Compendium of English History, by 
Charles Sumner. Copyright secured. Boston, 
1825." A year later he was reading Gibbon, and 
copying passages which struck his liking. Mean- 
time, although his scholarship did not show any ex- 
ceptional promise, he won several prizes for transla- 
tions and for English composition. As one of the 
six boys to receive Franklin medals at the end of his 
course, it was his privilege to attend the banquet 
that afternoon in Faneuil Hall, at which most of the 
dignitaries of the new city were present, and to 
listen to an address by President John Quincy 
Adams. Three weeks earlier he had crowded his 
way into that famous hall to hear a part of Webster's 
oration on Adams and Jefferson. The associations 
of that historic forum and of those famous statesman- 
orators cannot have failed to make a deep impres- 
sion upon a boy of his latent powers. 

As the end of his Latin School course drew near, 
his father was much perplexed over the problem of 
his further education, particularly as there were now 
seven other children whose future must be con- 
sidered. Accordingly he sent a long letter of in- 



PARENTAGE AND YOUTH 25 

quiry, in the boy's writing, to the head of the 
" American Literary, Scientific, and Military Acad- 
emy" at Middletown, Conn. He referred to his 
eight children, " to all of whom I wish to give a 
useful but not what is commonly called a learned 
education. My means enable me only to think of 
usefulness." He added: "But, sir, if I send him 
at all, it must be on a footing of those who seek 
employment," and he made careful inquiries as to 
the nature of the employment there available ;— 
whether it would be disagreeable to the boy's feel- 
ings, or of such a menial nature that it would 
" injure him in the estimation of those lads who are 
now his associates, among whom he is destined to 
earn his living, and, I hope, sustain a respectable 
rank." Three weeks after the sending of this letter, 
however, a new face was put upon the situation by the 
appointment of Charles Pinckney Sumner to the po- 
sition of Sheriff of Suffolk County. This opportune 
appointment led him to look upon Governor Lincoln 
as his " greatest earthly benefactor" for the reason 
that without it he would " not probably have sent a 
son to college." He now made application to the 
Secretary of War for a West Point cadetship for his 
son, giving Daniel Webster and Joseph Story as his 
own references. In this letter he says of the boy : 
"He is exceedingly well acquainted with history 
and geography, both ancient and modern. He 
knows the scenes of many of the distinguished battles 
of ancient and modern times, and the characters of 
the heroes who figured in them. He has a strong 



26 CHARLES SUMNER 

sense of patriotic pride, and a devotion to the wel- 
fare and glory of bis country. He is now at the 
Latin School in Boston, and in August next will be 
qualified to enter the University at Cambridge. 
He prefers the Academy at West Point." Years 
later Mr. Sumner again declared that it had been 
Charles's wish to enter West Point, " but I perceived 
it to be a hopeless undertaking to procure his ad- 
mission." This youthful aspiration for the life of 
the soldier is the more interesting in one who in his 
inaturer years became a most passionate apostle of 
universal peace. With the betterment in the family 
finances, Sheriff Sumner seems to have given up his 
former belief that for Charles "the life of a scholar 
would be too sedentary and inactive." In Septem- 
ber, 1826, Charles Sumner was enrolled as a freshman 
in Harvard College, with which thereafter to the 
day of his death he was so intimately associated that 
his schoolboy longings for West Point seem almost 
incredible. 

He was now fifteen years of age, one of the youngest 
in his class. His rapid growth had made him some- 
what ungainly in bearing ; he was difiident, yet by 
no means lacking in dignity. Excellently trained 
in the Latin School, he soon distinguished himself 
particularly in translations from the classics. In 
history, literature and forensics he excelled, showing 
great earnestness and self-possession in debate. But 
for mathematics and kindred subjects he had not 
the slightest aptitude. It is recalled that in one 
recitation he flunked dismally. Baying : " You know 



PARENTAGE AND YOUTH 27 

I don't pretend to know anything about mathemat- 
ics!" "Sumner! Mathematics! mathematics!" 
cried the instructor. "Don't you know the differ- 
ence? This is not mathematics ! This is physics ! " 
Disgusted by his failures, he soon began to slight 
the irksome subjects, devoting himself with zest to 
miscellaneous literature. This prevented his attain- 
ing high rank — he was barely above the average of 
his class — but none of its members was more widely 
read, and his phenomenal memory made the harvest 
of this reading always available. One somewhat 
unfortunate result was that from this time on his 
conversation, letters and addresses became over- 
weighted with quotations, particularly from the 
classics. In the junior and senior exhibitions he 
had inconspicuous parts ; in the former, a Greek 
dialogue, he extolled the profession of the orator ; in 
the latter, he gave a somewhat discriminating and 
favorable characterization of Napoleon. In his 
senior year Sumner won a prize of thirty dollars by 
an essay of considerable merit ; its chief defect was 
a lack of condensation, for, as one of his classmates 
said, Sumner was always "too full of matter." 
With this prize money he bought books, — Burton's 
"Anatomy of Melancholy," Byron's Poems, "Pil- 
grim's Progress," Hazlitt's " Select British Poets" 
and Harvey's " Shakespeare." ■ 

1 These last two were constantly upon his desk in later years. 
At his death, the Shakespeare was found open at the page where 
he had marked the lines : 

4< Would I were dead ; if God's good will were so : 
For what is in this world, but grief and woe ? " 



28 CHARLES SUMNER 

Half the members of Sumner's class were assigned 
parts upon the commencement stage. But for his 
father's urging, Sumner would have declined to ac- 
cept his part, a discussion of " The Religious Notions 
of the North American Indians." 

As a college student Sumner was on good terms 
with the faculty as well as with fellow students. 
On only one subject is there record of any friction. 
Sumner was always tenacious of his own opinion, 
and then, as in later life, he liked individuality in 
his own attire. He affected a " cloak of blue camlet 
lined with red," and a buff-colored waistcoat. Now 
among the rules of the college as to student's dress 
was the requirement that the waistcoat be of " black- 
mixed, or black ; or, when of cotton or linen fabric, 
of white." Accordingly Sumner was several times 
summoned before the " Parietal Board" and once 
received formal " admonition for illegal dress." 
But he persistently maintained that his waistcoat 
was near enough " white " to comply with the rule, 
and after repeated efforts to swerve him, the board 
fiually dropped the matter. 

In later years his Harvard friends recalled him as 
a fellow "of buoyant spirits and refreshing social- 
ity, sensitive and considerate, and always ready to 
take people at their best." He was an enthusiastic 
member of the Hasty Pudding Club, and retained a 
friendly interest in it even after he became senator. 
During his senior year, he and eight of his intimates 
in the class formed a secret society called " The 
Nine." Its meetings were held at the rooms of the 



PARENTAGE AND YOUTH 29 

members, who in turn presented essays and other 
literary exercises for mutual criticism. 

At the end of his junior year, with four of his 
classmates he set out upon a tramping trip to Lake 
Champlain. They left Cambridge in fine fettle one 
afternoon in the middle of July. At Amherst they 
found the college still in session ; they attended 
evening prayers and at five o'clock the next morn- 
ing the college bell again called them to chapel. 
Striking to the north, they visited Bennington, for, 
as Sumner phrased it, "We came to visit a spot hal- 
lowed in American history, — and to tread that field, 
sacred to liberty, where the cause of the Colonies 
first began to brighten." Upon the ground they 
studied the positions of the American and British 
forces. The pilgrims then passed on to Whitehall, 
Ticonderoga and Saratoga. At West Point Sumner 
presented to the superintendent a letter from his 
father, introducing this youth who a few years be- 
fore had preferred the Military Academy to Harvard 
College. His point of view had already changed, 
for while he was making a pilgrimage of famous 
battle-fields, and here marveled at the perfection of 
the cadets' drill, he acknowledged that his enthusi- 
asm was now ' ' for the mild arts of peace. ' ' 

This episode in Sumner's student days is of no 
slight significance as an earnest of his future. He 
entered upon the trip with a zest which did not flag 
to the end ; to the various historic scenes he brought 
a thorough knowledge of the events with which they 
were associated and a kindling imagination that 



30 CHARLES SUMNER 

thrilled him with patriotic fervor. One and another 
of his companions dropped away ; he alone clung to 
the plan as originally made, and by himself ascended 
Mt. Defiance and hunted out the scenes of Burgoyne's 
retreat and surrender. He was everywhere a keen 
observer ; industrial methods and opportunities, par- 
ticularly the advantages of the great canals, im- 
pressed him. He was in fine physical .vigor : the 
heat of summer, the chances and changes of farm- 
house hospitality had no terrors for him. In a 
single day he tramped alone thirty -seven miles. 
This tour was a prelude and a preparation for those 
extended and broadening European travels of a few 
years later which were to contribute most essentially, 
though unexpectedly, to his equipment for the noble 
public service that lay before him. 



CHAPTER II 

CHOICE OF A PROFESSION 

At the age of nineteen Charles Sumner was grad- 
uated from Harvard. He had been a diligent 
student and his mind was well stored ; he had a high 
sense of duty and an ambition for service, yet he felt 
no distinct leading toward any particular profession. 
Since "chill penury ' ? did not force him at once to 
become a bread-winner, he remained at home and 
devoted himself to study, while he wrestled with the 
problem of choosing a vocation. During this year 
of self- analysis he took life seriously : he laid out for 
himself an exacting schedule of work, and held to it, 
rising soon after five and rarely retiring before mid- 
night. Both society and needed exercise were neg- 
lected. His home was a discouraging environment 
for scholarly work, for he had no other study than 
the common sitting-room of the whole family, with 
its nine children. Nevertheless, he read diligently : 
samples of his self-prescribed regimen were Tacitus, 
Juvenal and Persius, Shakespeare, Milton, Hume's 
" Essays" ; and in history, Hallam, Robertson and 
Roscoe. What greatly impressed his classmates 
was the grim resolution with which he now set about 
conquering his college bete noire, mathematics, in 
the conviction that his mental discipline had suffered 
from his neglect of that line of study. Four hours 



32 CHAKLES SUMNER 

of each forenoon he devoted to this rigorous task. 
He found that he "really got geometry with some 
pleasure," but confessed that after much ''digging 
among the roots of algebra, those roots, when found, 
are but bitter " ; he stuck to them for four months, 
however, until he had retrieved his college delin- 
quencies. 

As a part of his self-culture Sumner seized every 
opportunity to hear great orators. He went to 
Salem to listen to Webster's famous appeal in the 
White murder trial, and heard several of the states- 
man's most celebrated speeches. The first meeting 
of these two, whose careers were to be so closely 
linked, was significant. ' ' The Boston Society for 
the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge " offered a prize 
for the best essay, written by a minor, on commerce. 
On the evening appointed for the announcement of 
the result, before a great audience, Daniel Webster, 
the president of the society, opened the envelope 
which had accompanied the successful essay, and 
requested the winner, "Charles Sumner," to come 
forward. As the slender boy of twenty with intelli- 
gent face and shock of curling brown hair stepped 
upon the platform, America's most distinguished 
statesman shook his hand cordially, called him his 
"young friend," and added, with other kindly 
words, that " the public held a pledge of this young 
man." 

But Sumner found it no easy task to determine 
how he should set about redeeming that pledge. 
He was bitterly unhappy at home, for he was mor- 



CHOICE OF A PKOFESSION 33 

bidly sensitive at being still dependent upon his 
father. To a classmate he wrote : " I am grateful 
for the encouraging word you give me. I am rather 
despondent, and I meet from none of my family those 
vivifying expressions which a young man always 
heartily accepts. My father says nought by way of 
encouragement. He seems determined to let me 
shape my own course, so that if I am wise, I shall 
be wise for niyself ; and if I am foolish, I alone shall 
bear it." Chance threw in his way an opportunity 
to try his hand at teaching ; he filled a temporary 
vacancy in a private school where one of his friends 
was employed. Three weeks sufficed to convince 
him that he had "a natural aversion to keeping 
school." "And oh! — quorum magna pars fui — the 
harassing, throat-cutting, mind-dissolving duties : 
pounding knowledge into heads which have no ap- 
petency for it, and enduring the arguing of urchin 
boys, and all those other ills to which schoolmaster 
flesh is heir !" 

For a time he plunged into current politics and 
became quite a propagandist of the anti-Masonic 
movement, "pricked on by the wrongs done his 
father by the Masons" ; but in later years he ac- 
knowledged that this movement had assumed undue 
prominence in his inexperienced eyes. Gradually 
he "brought his resolution to a focus" : his life-work 
should be in the law. Yet the decision was made 
without conviction or enthusiasm. To a friend 
already engaged in legal studies, he had recently 
written : "I fear that Blackstone and his train will 



34 CHARLES SUMNER 

usurp your inind too much, to the exclusion of all 
cultivation of polite letters. ... I look upon 
the mere lawyer, a reader of cases and cases alone, 
as one of the veriest wretches in the world. Dry 
items and facts, argumentative reports, and details 
of pleadings must incrust the mind with somewhat 
of their own rust." 

But a few weeks wrought a startling transforma- 
tion. For a year Sumner had been wrestliug with 
the problem of his future ; when once the decision 
was made that he should study law, hesitation aud 
morbid introspection were at an end. Where his 
studies should be pursued was not a matter of ques- 
tion. The whole bent of his mind was toward a 
systematic study of principles : not the lawyer's 
office, but the university was the congenial field for 
his labor, and to the Harvard Law School he turued, 
drawn both by his love for his alma mater and by 
his devotion to Judge Story, his father's warm 
friend from the days when they were students 
together at college. 

Only forty pupils were then in attendance upon 
the newly established law school. In so small a 
group the men were brought into close associa- 
tion, and here— to cite a single illustration— began 
Sumner's intimacy with Wendell Phillips. But the 
chief advantage in the sinallness of the numbers lay 
in the educational opportunities which it afforded. 
Class exercises were not formal lectures, but rather 
conferences to which both the teacher and his little 
circle of pupils contributed. During these years 



CHOICE OF A PROFESSION 35 

there were but two professorships, and these were 
held during most of Sumner's course by Joseph 
Story and Simon Greenleaf. With both of these 
eminent jurists Sumner was soon upon terms of the 
closest intimacy, and it would be difficult to over- 
estimate the influence of these friendships. Judge 
Story came to love him as a son, receiving him in 
his home as a member of the family. This affection 
was fully reciprocated. His teacher's beautiful 
character, his immense learning, his eloquence, his 
well-earned fame as judge and publicist, all appealed 
to the ardent disciple and kindled in him intense 
enthusiasm. The ideal, which through anxious 
months had been eluding his quest, now stood re- 
vealed in the Jurist, and Sumner eagerly "followed 
after, if that he might apprehend." 

Indeed, to his friends it soon became a matter of 
anxiety lest he be consumed by his own zeal. At 
twenty he was described as a "great, tall, lank 
creature, quite heedless of the form and fashion of 
his garb." Though now six feet and two inches in 
height, he weighed but 120 pounds ; his complexion 
was not healthy, his eyes were inflamed by much 
study, and he developed a cough which caused 
groundless apprehensions, for he was endowed 
with a splendid constitution. The passionate fervor 
of the devotee he brought to the pursuit of his 
"noble profession," sacrificing alike recreation and 
social engagements. "I wish no acquaintances, 
for they eat up time like locusts." He declared that 
the lawyer if he were to be anything but a mere 



36 CHAELES SUMNEE 

pettifogger, must know law, history, philosophy, 
and human nature. This is his schedule of work : 
" Six hours, — namely, the forenoon wholly and solely 
to law ; afternoon to classics ; evening to history, 
subjects collateral and assistant to law, etc." Two 
o'clock was his regular hour for retiring, and he 
was often up with the sun. Such unremitting labor 
early began to yield fruit. Judge Story said : 
"He has a wonderful memory, he keeps all his 
knowledge in order and can put his hand on it in a 
moment. This is a great gift." Yet some of his 
friends questioned whether in keeping his mind 
constantly on the stretch in the effort of acquiring 
knowledge he were not impairing its power for 
higher, creative effort. 

He was made librarian, a task which he found 
thoroughly congenial. He catalogued the collection, 
and no one approached him in knowledge of its 
treasures. In later years he was remembered as a 
"slender, bright-eyed youth, with what seems to me 
an adoring reverence for the hallowed spot, so that his 
voice was subdued and his touch rested tenderly on 
the dear books." Yet aside from his regular tasks, 
Sumner found time to get some valuable experience 
in writing. He won another Bowdoin prize by a 
rather diffuse and hastily written paper. Soon, how- 
ever, " his pen grew stiffer " as a result of a series 
of articles which he contributed to the American 
Jurist. But as yet his writing showed little of the 
vigor and vividness which were to be called forth 
by the great issues of later years. 



CHOICE OF A PROFESSION 37 

William Wetinore Story, the celebrated sculptor, 
who knew and loved Sumner as an elder brother, 
has left the best picture of the young law student. 
He describes him as an eager and indefatigable 
worker, who had not limited his studies to the law, 
but had ranged with keen interest over the whole 
field of literature. "He was at this time totally 
without vanity, and desirous to acquire knowledge 
and information on every subject." "Of all the 
men I ever knew at his age, he was the least sus- 
ceptible to the charms of women. He would desert 
the most blooming beauty to talk to the plainest of 
men. This was a constant source of amusement to 
us, and we used to lay wagers with pretty girls that 
with all their art they could not keep him at their 
side a quarter of an hour," and the girls always lost 
their wagers. "He was an interesting talker, but 
had no lightness of hand. He was kindly of nature, 
interested in everything. He was at this time 
almost impervious to a joke. He had no humor 
himself, and little sense of it in others, and his jests, 
when he tried to make one, were rather cumbrous. 
But in ' plain sailing ' no one could be better or 
more agreeable." 

At the conclusion of his courses in the law school, 
early in January, 1834, Sumner, as a student, en- 
tered the office of Benjamin Rand, a lawyer of 
eminence, in whose conversation and choice legal 
library the young man found his chief stimulus. 
He continued making frequent contributions to the 
American Jurist. 



38 CHARLES SUMNER 

But travel was ever one of the most educative 
factors iu Sumner's develoimient, and be could not 
bring himself to settle down to the drudgery of a 
law office before taking a trip to Washington, his 
main object being to attend sessions of the Supreme 
Court, where his ideal and mentor, Judge Story, 
was sitting. To the young man of twenty-three it 
was a most memorable experience. Leaving Boston 
at half-past three o'clock on a February morning, 
1834, by hard labor over the worst of roads, in cold 
so intense that but for his sister's " tippet " he de- 
clared he should have frozen, he reached Hartford 
at three o'clock the following morning. Before 
noon he was off again, and in nine hours the forty- 
mile ride to New Haven was accomplished. His 
attending morning prayers at Yale College almost 
made him lose the seven o'clock boat for New York. 
From here to Philadelphia the trip was by boat ex- 
cept for the thirty -seven miles from Ainboy to 
Bordentown, where Sumner experienced his first 
railway ride. To his fourteen-year-old sister he 
wrote : " There is something partaking of the sub- 
lime in the sense that you are going at the rate of 
fifteen miles an hour, drawn by an invisible agent, 
the contrivance of man, who has sought out many 
inventions." 

In New York he received a cordial welcome from 
Chancellor Kent, to whom he brought a letter of 
introduction from Professor Greenleaf. He told 
Sumner that he "wanted to go to Washington, but 
if he went should be obliged to see much company, 



CHOICE OF A PROFESSION 39 

call upon Jackson, and dine with hiin perhaps, all 
of which he could not consent to do." He believed 
that "Jackson would ruin us.' 7 (A few weeks 
later Sumner was referring to Jackson as "the old 
tyrant."; He described Kent's conversation as 
"lively and instructive, but grossly uugramniatical. 
It is a wonder which I cannot solve, that he is so 
correct a writer, and so incorrect a converser." 

At Philadelphia he formed a friendship, lasting 
and helpful, with Richard Peters, the reporter of 
decisions of the Supreme Court. In Washington 
Judge Story's influence opened to him the rarest of 
opportunities. All but one of the justices of the 
Supreme Court were living in the same house and 
taking their meals at the same table, and here it 
was young Sumner's privilege to be admitted to 
their goodly fellowship. Chief-Justice Marshall 
seemed to him "a model of simplicity ; naturally 
taciturn, yet ready to laugh ; to joke and to be 
joked with." Sumner spent a month in Washing- 
ton. His chief interest was in the Supreme Court, 
where one of the most important cases was being 
tried, with Francis Scott Key and Daniel Webster 
as opponents, both of whom seemed to the youthful 
critic scandalously remiss in their preparation. 
Webster gave him a card entitling him to admission 
to the floor of the Senate, and here he heard each 
of the great triumvirate. Clay's eloquence he 
thought "splendid and thrilling." " His language, 
without being choice, is strong ; but it is his manner 
. . . which makes him so powerful." Calhoun 



40 CHARLES SUMNER 

" is no orator, very rugged in his language, unstudied 
in style, marching directly to the main points of his 
subject without stopping for parley or introduc- 
tion. " Sumner found his father's benefactor, Gov- 
ernor Lincoln, who was just beginning a first term 
in Congress, homesick and much discouraged by the 
size of the Representatives' Hall, where he could 
neither hear nor be heard. Sumner wrote long ac- 
counts of his experiences both to Professor Green- 
leaf and to his father, to whom he had to apply 
repeatedly for funds to meet his expenses of about 
ten dollars a week. These letters were signed : 
" Affectionately, your prodigal, Chas." 

Despite the wealth of opportunities which Wash- 
ington offered to an impressionable young man, it 
made little appeal to Sumner. His first feeling was 
one of disappointment. "Here I am in the great 
city, or rather the city of great design, of spacious 
and far-reaching streets, without houses to adorn 
them or business to keep them lively, with a Capitol 
that would look proud amidst European palaces, 
and with whole lines of poor, stunted brick houses, 
with stores beneath and boarding above. There is 
nothing natural in the growth of the city. It only 
grows under the hotbed culture of Congress." 
Nor was the political and social atmosphere more 
congenial to him : " Notwithstanding the attraction 
afforded by the Senate, and the newspaper fame 
which I see the politicians there acquire, I feel no 
envy therefor, and no disposition to enter the un- 
weeded garden in which they are laboring, even if 



CHOICE OF A PROFESSION 41 

its gates were open to me ; in plain language, I see 
no political condition that I should be willing to de- 
sire, even if I thought it within my reach, — which, 
indeed, I do not think of the humblest." On the 
eve of leaving Washington, he wrote to his father : 
" I shall probably never come here again. I have 
little or no desire ever to come again in any capacity. 
Nothing that I have seen of politics has made me 
look upon them with any feeling other than loath- 
ing. The more I see of them, the more I love law, 
which, I feel, will give me an honorable liveli- 
hood." 

Not long after Sumner's return from this orient- 
ing journey, Judge Story urged him to accept an 
instructorship in the Harvard Law School. Both 
of his old professors had looked forward to this as- 
sociation, for success in which Sumner seemed well 
fitted both by nature and by trainiug. But he was 
now eager to get into the active practice of his pro- 
fession, and declined the offer. In November, 1834, 
he entered into a partnership with George S. Hil- 
lard, whom he had known years before in the Latin 
School. The young lawyers rented rooms on the 
second floor at No. 4 Court Street, at the corner of 
Washington Street, and in that building Sumner 
retained an office as long as he continued to prac- 
tice law. Among his neighbors here were men of 
note : Theophilus Parsons, Rufus Choate, John A. 
Andrew and Horace Mann. Professor Greenleaf 
made the new office his headquarters in town ; 
Judge Story often called upon his old pupils, and 



42 CHARLES SUMNER 

soon their rooms came to be a much frequented 
rendezvous for men of legal and literary tastes. 

Sumner's legal studies had been most painstaking 
and he had a large circle of influential friends. In 
these early years at the bar he met with moderate 
success 5 but it was far below what his friends had 
expected, and he acknowledged his own disappoint- 
ment. Some of the reasons were not far to seek. 
He had little liking for the business routine of the 
lawyer's office. His interest was in legal principles 
rather than in practice ; his mind suited better the 
vocation of the teacher or judge than of the attorney. 
In court he was apt to display ponderous learning 
rather than dexterous marshaling of testimony. An- 
other cause which tended to impair his success was 
the irregularity of his office hours. For, early in 
1835, he had begun to lecture in the law school, in 
the absence of Judge Story, and for the next two 
years he continued this work, which often kept him 
away from his office every other day for months. 
This teaching p roved far more congenial than that 
of his earlier days. His pupils remembered him as 
assuming no professional airs, but having a warm 
sympathy and fellowship with the boys. " He was 
very good-tempered and fond of youngsters, — at all 
events as listeners." William "Wetmore Story was 
his favorite pupil, an intimacy which gave great 
satisfaction to Judge Story. He assisted both Story 
and Greenleaf in preparing some of their legal texts 
for the press. For three years he contributed fre- 
quently to the American Jurist ; in the spring of 1836 



CHOICE OF A PROFESSION 43 

its editors were aDnounced as Hillard, Sumner and 
disking, the author of works on parliamentary law, 
a young man with whom Sumner had hired a lodg- 
ing-room in the same building with his office. This 
editorial work was of good quality, but it took much 
time and brought little revenue. Sumner's articles 
usually dealt with legal writers and books rather 
than with the law itself, thus further evidencing a 
bent of mind little suited to active legal duties. 
Another important task which Sumner undertook 
was the revising and completing of Dunlap's "Ad- 
miralty Practice." His careful study of this sub- 
ject was of great service in his public life. In later 
years Sumner came to think that he had allowed 
himself to undertake altogether too much literary 
drudgery in these early days of his law practice. 
The surprising thing is that while his friends and 
associates were winning distinction as public speak- 
ers, and accepting public office, he showed no liking 
or special aptitude for the platform and found no 
attraction whatever in politics. 

But the thing of most significance at this period 
of Sumner's life was not his slow rise in his profes- 
sion, but his widening friendship among men of 
force and distinction. In Washington he had first 
made the acquaintance of Francis Lieber, the pub- 
licist, with whom he was to enjoy many years of 
close and helpful intimacy. At this period, also, 
he came into friendly intercourse with the Rev. Dr. 
William Ellery Channiug, by whom his ideals and 
view of life were profoundly affected. His editorial 



44 CHARLES SUMNER 

work brought him in touch with eminent jurists, at 
home and abroad. Most stimulating aud helpful of 
all, however, was the warm friendshij) which was 
formed among five young men of ages ranging from 
twenty-six to thirty, — Cornelius C. Felton, Henry 
R. Cleveland, Henry W. Longfellow, George S. 
Hillard, and Charles Sumner. They came together 
informally several times a month, to talk over com- 
mon interests and aspirations. Two of the number 
had already visited Europe, and the others were 
filled with a keen Wanderlust. They were all book- 
lovers, and had made considerable advances in var- 
ious lines of literary effort. Good cheer abounded 
at their meetings, and in its warmth they talked 
over current books and criticized one another's liter- 
ary ventures with the utmost frankness and good- 
will. The gatherings of "The Five of Clubs," as 
they called themselves, continued for a number of 
years. 



CHAPTER III 

EUROPEAN TRAVEL 

For years one of Sumner's keenest desires had 
been to know Europe, and in 1837 this desire, un- 
der the influence of Cleveland and Longfellow, be- 
came a fixed resolve. The decision to break away 
from the law office for an indefinite sojourn abroad 
was one not lightly to be made. The counsels of 
prudence and of most of his friends were distinctly 
against it. Sumner was now twenty-six years of 
age. He had disappointed his friends as well as 
himself by his failure to gain an assured start in his 
profession, and the plainest dictate of common sense 
seemed to be that the building up of his practice 
should receive his unremitting attention. Moreover, 
he had not been able to save more than a third of 
what his contemplated tour would cost, and must 
therefore borrow three or four thousand dollars, a 
sum likely to mortgage his earnings for several 
years. Not only did his friends think his plan un- 
wise because of its expense and its interruption of 
his legal career, but they feared that its effect would 
be to dissipate his energies, wean him from his pro- 
fession, and make him discontented with the plod- 
ding life that lay before him. Sumner was sensitive 
to this disapproval, and was not a little disheartened 



46 CHARLES SUMNEE 

by Presideut Quincy's blunt words, u All that Eu- 
rope will do for him will be to spoil him, sending 
him home with a moustache and a cane." 

In the face of these discouragements, it required 
not a little resolution on Sumner s part to hold to 
his purpose. But it was no holiday trip for amuse- 
ment or recreation that he was planning. "My 
journey," he wrote to a friend, " will not be pecul- 
iarly legal. I shall aim to see society in all its forms 
which are accessible to me ; to see men of all char- 
acters ; to observe institutions and laws ; to go cir- 
cuits and attend terms and parliaments ; and then 
come home and be happy." And so, arranging to 
borrow from Judge Story and two other friends the 
funds needed, on the 8th of December, 1837, he 
embarked for travel and sojourn in Europe which 
were to last nearly two and a half years. The voy- 
age was made in the sailing-ship Albany, for as 
yet no steamship crossed the Atlantic in passenger 
service. 1 

Humboldt used to say: "You never see in a 
country what you do not take with you." Rarely 
has a young man gone from America to Europe so 
tingling with anticipation, so susceptible to all that 
is best in the societj 7 , art and culture of the Old 

J To the account of this journey and to Sumner's letters 
from abroad, his friend and the authorized compiler of his 
memoirs, E. L. Pierce, gives a sixth of the total space devoted 
to his life. This is certainly a disproportionate allotment ; yet 
it is true that this European experience constituted a turning- 
point in his life. It formed his mind and his associations, and 
proved a most essential part of his preparation for his as yet un- 
suspected life-work. 



EUROPEAN TRAVEL 47 

World. From his first sight of Havre his letters 
are full of the zest of novelty. He put in a day of 
strenuous sightseeing at Rouen, fascinated by the 
quaint architecture and the historical associations 
of its cathedral and other buildings, and declared 
that he could spend months in that city and still 
find interest, Yet in the next breath this eager 
student of ''society in all its forms" says that he 
must leave Rouen after a stay of only thirty-six 
hours, for "to-morrow night is the last on which 
the hells of Paris are to be open, they being abol- 
ished after that time by law ; and I wish, if possi- 
ble, to see them, besides being in Paris on New 
Year's Day." Arrived in Paris on the evening of 
Sunday, December 31st, his first object of search 
was the most famous of these gaming-houses. He 
has left a vivid account of this "last night of Fras- 
cati, and my first night in Paris," discoursing 
gravely on the excitements of gambling, and ac- 
knowledging that he "felt the temptation, though 
he restrained his hand." 

He remained in Paris till the end of May, two 
months longer than he had intended. At first he 
took lodgings in the Latin Quarter and renounced 
everything that could interfere with his getting com- 
mand of French. He employed two teachers, and 
went for long walks with his landlady's small boy, 
' ' taking every opportunity to speak the language, 
even if it be but a word." He became a subscriber 
at Galignani's reading room, where he read ten 
newspapers a day. Such persistent study soon be- 



48 CHAELES SUMNER 

gan to yield good returns : within four weeks he 
was following lectures at the Sorbonne ; a few weeks 
later he began to go into society and within three 
months he served as interpreter for an American 
before a magistrate. 

His days were crowded full. All was fish that 
came to his net. At the Sorbonne and the College 
de France he passed from room to room, sampling 
the lectures and testing his knowledge of French. 
His programme of a single morning will illustrate 
the variety of his intellectual diet : First, at the 
Sorbonne, a lecture on the differential and integral 
calculus, — which must have been particularly edi- 
fying, in view of Sumner's mathematical aptitudes ; 
next, a lecture on Servitudes in the icole de Droit ; 
next, at the Sorbonne, a part of a lecture " on some 
French author, — I could not catch the name" ; next, 
at the ^cole de Droit, a lecture on the Institutes ; 
next, a visit to the Musee d' Artillerie. At the end 
of three months he had heard almost all the lecturers 
of eminence. He had also made a thorough study 
of the courts and of court procedure. The sessions 
of the Chamber of Deputies and of the House of 
Peers interested him greatly, and he records impres- 
sions of Guizot, Thiers, Lamartine, and others, 
with whom he became somewhat acquainted. Ho 
formed a high opinion of Louis Philippe, — u a great 
sovereign, truly great ; mingling in business as much 
as his ministers, and controlling them ail. He is 
more than his cabinet. Measures emanate from 
him. With skill that is wonderful, he has reined 



EUROPEAN TRAVEL 49 

iu the revolution of July." Teu years later the 
King was to reveal himself in another light. 

But Sumner's purpose had been not to study 
governmental or legal institutions alone ; it was 
to see society in all its forms. Hence he visited not 
only the ordinary objects of tourists' interest, but 
also the observatory, the famous hospitals, where he 
attended the clinics of the most eminent surgeons, 
and the Hopital Salpetriere, the great almshouse 
where were lodged 5,000 inhrm and aged women. 
He delighted in the city's architectural beauties, 
and was captivated by its street scenes and life. At 
midnight of Mardi Gras he went to the masked ball 
at the French Opera, and at daybreak drove out to 
Courtille, a village beyond the walls, where the merry- 
making of the common people was still at its height. 

In March Sumner changed his lodgings from the 
Latin Quarter to the region of the boulevards. As- 
siduous study had loosed his tongue, and he now 
began to go more into society. He presented few 
of the many letters friends had plentifully provided 
him. The editor, Foelix, showed him much kind- 
ness, and he had a friendly interview with Sis- 
mondi. Into general society he went but little. It 
is significant of the extent of French knowledge of 
America at that time, that at the table of M. 6rard, 
then perhaps the most eminent manufacturer of 
musical instruments in the world, Sumner was asked 
by his host, with the greatest ingenuousness, "if 
one of the noblest and most respectable families in 
America were not the descendants of Montezuma." 



50 CHARLES SUMNER 

The young student of jurisprudence was not 
favorably impressed by the learning of the French 
bar: "With them now it is indeed the code and 
nothing but the code, . . . and it would seem 
superfluous to add that they know nothing of for- 
eign jurisprudence, nothing of English and Ameri- 
can in particular." 

Amid the art treasures of the Louvre and of Ver- 
sailles Sumner felt "cabined, cribbed, confined 
from my ignorance of the principles of art and of 
its history, except iu its most prominent traits : 
. . . but they touched my mind, untutored as 
it is, like a sweet strain of music. " His artistic 
appreciation was much quickened during these 
months. The art of the theatre and of the opera 
was highly congenial to him, and he was thrilled 
by the genius of Mars and of Rachel. Before he 
had been in Paris a fortnight he declared : "My 
voyage has already been compensated for — seasick- 
ness, time, money, and all— many times over. It 
was fully paid for at Rouen. All that I have seen 
since is clear gain." His stay of five months in 
Paris, though nearly twice as long as he had in- 
tended, left many things undone ; but it had ac- 
complished its chief object in giving him an excel- 
lent working knowledge of the French language ; 
in addition it had opened his eyes to vast ranges 
of interest to which he had hitherto been almost 
totally blind. 

Sailing from Calais on the last day of May, 
Sumner approached London by the gate of the 



EUROPEAN TRAVEL 51 

sea; for eighty miles upon the Thames he passed 
through a continuous stream of vessels, the pano- 
rama of historic scenes gradually opening before 
his eager eyes. Near Charing Cross he took lodg- 
ings, which he made his headquarters for the next 
ten months. 

The story of this sojourn in England is one of the 
richest and most varied opportunity. Before he 
left America, many of his friends had pressed upon 
him letters of introduction. These he used most 
sparingly ; he made it a rigid rule never to ask for 
an introduction. But he soon found himself over- 
whelmed by a mass of invitations. As a foreign 
visitor, he was given the entree of four clubs, the 
Garrick, Alfred, Travelers', and Athenaeum. Here 
he met on terms of pleasant familiarity many of the 
leading men of the day. Judge Story's commenda- 
tion * to John Stuart Wortley and to Mr. Justice 
Vaughan, together with Sumner's intelligent en- 
thusiasm for everything pertaining to jurispru- 
dence, brought him into close association with Eng- 
land's most famous leaders of the bench and of the 
bar, who showed him unexampled cordiality. He 
was called to a seat upon the bench at Westminster 

J In his letter introducing Sumner to some of the leading 
jurists of England, Judge Story spoke of him as "a young 
lawyer giving promise of the most eminent distinction in his 
profession, with truly extraordinary attainments, literary and 
judicial, and a gentleman of the highest purity and propriety 
of character." Later he was frequently heard to say : " I shall 
die content, as far as my professorship is concerned, if Charles 
Sumner is to succeed me." — Carl Schurz, Eulogy of Sumner, p. 
187. 



52 CHARLES SUMNER 

Hall and at the Old Bailey, where he was waited 
upon by the sheriff and invited to dine with the 
judges and magistrates. His health was proposed 
by the Lord Mayor, and his response was very well 
received. In the middle of the summer, he left 



London, and, on invitation of the judges, attended 
the circuits, everywhere meeting with the warmest 
welcome. He was repeatedly the guest of honor at 
banquets to the bar and court, and his words of ap- 
preciation and of recognition of the common heritage 
of America and England met with high favor. To 
Story, Greenleaf, and especially to Hillard, he sent 
long letters filled with keen observations of English 
legal institutions and with character sketches of the 
jurists whom he met upon this pilgrimage. He was 
struck forcibly by the contrast between the scanty 
and shallow equipment of members of the French 
bar and the broad-mindedness and profundity of his 
English acquaintances ; and between the bickerings 
and jealousies among French lawyers in their re- 
lations with one another and the " heartiness and 
cordiality which pervade all the English bar. They 
are truly a band of brothers, and I have been re- 
ceived among them as one of them." Upon his re- 
turn to London from the tour of the great circuits, 
one of the chief objects of Sumner's European enter- 
prise had been accomplished : he had gained a 
deeper insight into and mastery of English legal 
practice and circuit life than any other foreigner 
who had ever visited England. 
But these invaluable opportunities were not the 



EUROPEAN TEAVEL 53 

only ones lavished upon Sumner, nor were they the 
ones that were to exercise the greatest influence 
upon his future. He was present at the coronation 
of Queen Victoria ; he heard the young Queen's 
speech at the opening of Parliament. By the in- 
vitation of one of the lords-in- waiting, he passed a 
day and a night at Windsor Castle, and leaves some 
highly unconventional glimpses of the royal house- 
hold, — as of Lord Byron, the poet's brother, who, 
having been sent to take breakfast with the ladies 
of the bedchamber and maids of honor, "came 
bouncing down, saying, 'Murray, the gals say 
that there is nothing but stale eggs in the castle.' " 
No one was more surprised than Sumner at the 
freedom with which he was admitted into all that 
was best in English society. A cordial welcome 
from the lawyers was to be expected both from his 
recommendations and from his own attainments in 
jurisprudence. But this was a mere incident of the 
warm-heartedness with which he was everywhere 
received. A letter of introduction to Earl Fitz- 
william led to an intimate friendship and mauy 
happy hours at Went worth House and Milton Park. 
In the high-minded Lord Morpeth, later seventh Earl 
of Carlisle, he found a congenial spirit, and an inti- 
macy was quickly established which ended only with 
death. The aged Earl of Leicester welcomed him 
to the sumptuous hospitalities of Holkham House, 
where Sumner admired the splendid paintings of 
Titian, Raphael, Da Vinci and Van Dyck, and for 
hours pored with delight over the crabbed pages 



5-4 CHAKLES SUMNBE 

which bore the mark of the great Coke's pen. Lord 
Wharncliffe, Lord Durham, and Lord Holland made 
him their guest. Of the mauy public men whom 
Suinner met, none was more kind than Lord 
Brougham. Sumner's letters give interesting pic- 
tures of the life at Brougham Hall and glimpses of 
its master, — of his tenderness toward his mother, 
his devotion to his invalid daughter, his brilliant 
conversation, "his versatility and universal attain- 
ments. ' ' To Sumner it was a mystery why this man , 
at the time almost inaccessible, should have shown 
the young American student such marked attention 
and frank cordiality ; but to a common friend Lord 
Brougham said that he "had never met with any 
man of Sumner's age of such extensive legal knowl- 
edge and natural legal intellect, and predicted that 
he would prove an honor to the American bar." It 
was said at the time that Sumner "made the ac- 
quaintance of all the principal Whig families going 
north, and of the Tories on his return," and he him- 
self wrote to Lieber : "I have been received with a 
kindness, hospitality and distinction of which I truly 
felt my un worthiness. I have visited many — per- 
haps I may say most — of the distinguished men of 
these glorious countries at their seats, and have seen 
English country life, which is the height of refined 
luxury, in some of its most splendid phases." 

But not less stimulating and congenial to Sumner 
was his intercourse with the leaders of English 
literature. Emerson's introduction led to a friend- 
ship with Carlyle. Landor, entertaining him at 



EUROPEAN TRAVEL 55 

breakfast, alternately pleased and startled him by 
compliment and criticism upon his English. He 
spent an interesting morniug with Leigh Hunt, on 
an introduction from Carlyle. For two delightful 
days he was the guest of Sydney Smith. He took 
tea with Wordsworth, and was charmed by the 
simplicity, grace and sincerity of his manner and 
conversation. Lord Jeffrey of the Edinburgh Review 
he met at his own hearth, and was vastly impressed 
by "his talent, fertility of expression and unlimited 
knowledge (almost learning). He spoke on every 
subject and always better than anybody else." 
Sumner dined repeatedly in company with Macau- 
lay, and was struck by his wide knowledge and 
brilliant conversation ; but experience led him to 
accept Sydney Smith's verdict that in social inter- 
course Macaulay was ' ' a tremendous machine for 
colloquial oppression," for he poured out the stores 
of his prodigious memory ' ' with an instructive but 
dinning prodigality," — a social fault which Sumner 
himself developed in his later years. He saw much 
of Harriet Martineau, whose acquaintance he had 
already made in America, and was greatly interested 
in Mrs. Shelley. He was welcomed in the homes of 
Grote, Hallam and Samuel Rogers, and formed a 
lasting friendship with Mr. and Mrs. Basil Montagu. 
At a dinner of the British Association for the Pro- 
motion of Science, Sumner was one of the guests, 
and made an impromptu speech, full of an Ameri- 
can's appreciation of the mother country, which was 
quite the feature of the occasion. Not the least 



56 CHARLES SUMNER 

interesting of the hospitalities showered upon him 
was a dinner given by Colburn the publisher, at 
which were present Tom Campbell "and some six 
or eight of the small fry — the minims of literature, 
all guilty of print." In short, when Sumner left 
England, he could truthfully say to Hillard : "I 
now hardly call to mind a person in England that I 
cared to see whom I have not met under circum- 
stances the most agreeable and nattering to myself." 
It remains to ask, What opened wide England's 
most exclusive doors to this young American scholar ? 
English society was at that time suspicious of visitors 
from across the ocean. Wordsworth complained 
bitterly to Sumner of the officiousness and indecency 
of some American pen-drivers who had invaded the 
privacy of his home to make a page out of an " in- 
terview." Sumner was but twenty-seven, though he 
was by many supposed to be at least ten years older. 
He had no established reputation, had made no re- 
markable advance in his profession, and had given 
not the slightest indication of the career that lay 
before him. To be sure, he carried letters of com- 
mendation from friends, but he presented few of 
them, and such letters rarely lead to more than con- 
ventional courtesies, unless the bearer betters his in- 
troduction. In England, Scotland and Ireland, Sum- 
ner's travels were a continuous series of visits, upon 
urgent invitations which " grew out of casual meet- 
ings in society and were extended in a spirit of kind- 
ness and hospitality which made his heart overflow 
as he thought of it." Sumner's social success was 



EUROPEAN TRAVEL 57 

due alone to the attractive qualities of his own 
personality. He was young and full of generous 
enthusiasm. His omnivorous reading in literature, 
history and jurisprudence made him exceptionally 
intelligent upon topics of interest to leaders of Eng- 
lish thought, and like Lowell he had a strong feeling 
of the essential unity of the English-speaking people 
which made him thoroughly at home in England. 
Although distinctly lacking in wit and brilliancy, 
his manner and conversation were instinct with 
genuineness and appreciation. As one of his friends 
said of him, in the Quarterly Review, soon after his 
return to America : " Mr. Sumner presents in his 
own person a decisive proof that an American 
gentleman, without official rank or wide-spread repu- 
tation, by mere dint of courtesy, candor, an entire 
absence of pretension, an appreciating spirit, and a 
cultivated mind, may be received on a perfect foot- 
ing of equality in the best English circles, social, 
political and intellectual ; which, be it observed, 
are hopelessly inaccessible to the itinerant note- 
taker, who never gets beyond the outskirts or the 
show-houses. " 

To a young man of Sumner's susceptibilities, these 
months of intimate association with many of Eng- 
land's foremost men could not fail to prove a forma- 
tive influence of the utmost importance. Their ef- 
fects were to be observed not only in the broadening 
of his own horizon, but in the added power which 
he was to exercise, particularly as head of the Sen- 
ate Committee on Foreign Relations during most 



68 CHARLES SUMNER 

critical years, both because of his thorough under - 
staudiug of European politics, aud of his personal 
acquaintance with party leaders and moulders of 
public opinion. 

Indeed, the high favor with which Sumner had 
come to be regarded by Englishmen of influence was 
to be turned to speedy account. In March, 1838, he 
left London for Italy. In Paris, however, he was 
prevailed upon by General Lewis Cass, United 
States Minister to France, to undertake a patriotic 
service, which detained him several weeks. Friendly 
relations between the United States and England 
were at the time much disturbed by the Northeast- 
ern Boundary controversy and by the affair of the 
Caroline. The boundary dispute had arisen out of 
ambiguity of the language used in the Treaty of 
1783, and all attempts to secure a settlement had 
proved futile. The Americans in Paris considered 
it desirable that the American argument be plainly 
set forth so that it might be clearly appreciated both 
in England and on the Continent, and Sumner 
finally yielded to their urging that he attempt this 
task. The result was a comprehensive paper, filling 
six and a half columns in Galignani's Messenger, 
copies of which were sent to members of Parliament 
and other men of weight in England. While setting 
forth the American argument strongly, the spirit of 
the paper was candid and pacific, and it made a 
most favorable impression both in England and in 
America. When in Paris at this time, Sumner sum 
much of Lord Brougham, who later in the House of 



EUROPEAN TRAVEL 69 

Lord3 spoke in favor of the American view of this 
matter. The controversy, it will be remembered, 
was finally settled in 1842 by the Treaty of Wash- 
ington, which established a line of compromise. 

As soon as this task was finished, Simmer con- 
tinued his journey to Italy. A month was devoted 
to sightseeing by the way, and on the 21st of May, 
his "fondest expectations all on tiptoe," from the 
Alban Hills he caught his first glimpse of the dome 
of St. Peter's. Sumner's coming to Rome was the 
fulfilment of the dearest vision of his youth. His 
mind was richly stored with the treasures of history 
and of classic literature, and at sight of the monu- 
ments of " the greatness that was Rome," he thrilled 
as with a pilgrim's devotion. He never ceased to 
refer to the months spent here as the happiest in his 
life. 

But in his eagerness to see its sights he did not 
allow himself to forget his purpose to know Italy's 
life and literature. To this end at first he left his 
letters of introduction unused and devoted himself 
to study with an assiduity which soon yielded large 
returns. At the end of the summer he reported : 
"The hot months passed quickly in Rome. My 
habits were simple. Rose at half- past six o'clock, 
threw myself on my sofa, with a little round table 
near, well covered with books, read undisturbed till 
about ten, when a servant brought on a tray my 
breakfast, — two eggs done sur le plat, a roll and a 
cup of chocolate j some of the books were pushed 
aside enough to give momentary place to the tray. 



60 CHAELES SUMXER 

The breakfast was concluded without quitting the 
sofa ; rang the bell, and my table was put to rights, 
and my reading went on often till five or six o'clock 
in the evening, without my once rising from the 
sofa. Was it not Gray's heaven ? " At the end of 
four months he wrote : "There is no Italian which 
I cannot understand without a dictionary ; there is 
hardly a classic in the language of which I have 
not read the whole, or considerable portions." All 
of Ariosto he despatched on the road to Venice. 

But the glamour that hung about his Italian days 
was due not alone to classical associations nor to the 
charms of Italian literature. He formed there some 
of his warmest friendships. In the American con- 
sul, George W. Greene, he found a true scholar and 
a cultured man, with whom he enjoyed many an 
hour, most of all a retreat of several days in the 
Franciscan monastery of Palazzuola. At Eome 
Sumner first met the young American sculptor, 
Crawford, in whom he became deeply interested, 
and in whose work he thought he detected marked 
genius. Crawford had as yet acquired no reputation 
in his own country. Sumner wrote in his behalf to 
many friends in Boston, and it was through his in- 
strumentality that the subscription was made which 
led to the purchase of Crawford's "Orpheus" for 
the Boston Athemeuni (now placed in the Boston 
Art Museum), an encouragement which did much to 
assure the young sculptor's future, and which he al- 
ways held in most grateful remembrance. In Flor- 
ence, too, Sumner took great delight in discussing 



EUEOPEAX TEAVEL 61 

sculptural matters with Horatio Greenough, then at 
work upou bis " Washington," regarding some de- 
tails of which he consulted Sumner. He also met 
Hiram Powers, who then " had not got beyond bust- 
making. " These months on the Continent and 
especially in Italy did much to quicken Sumner's ar- 
tistic appreciation, in wmich he was to find a never- 
failing source of pleasure and solace. 

In the autumn Sumner spent a month in Vienna. 
Here he was cordially received by Metternich, who 
professed the greatest regard for America, saying 
that it was young and Europe old : " Mais laissons 
nous joulr de noire vieillesse." Five weeks in Berlin 
were filled with opportunity. By the Crown Prince 
and Prince William, later the first German Emperor, 
he was well received. He met Humboldt and the 
historians, Eanke and Eaumer, and discussed his 
favorite theme, the codification of the law, with 
Savigny, as he had already done with Brougham 
and Sismondi. This topic he took up with renewed 
interest with Thibaut, the head of the philosophical 
school of jurists, whom he met at Heidelberg, 
where he spent five delightful weeks, being espe- 
cially indebted for courtesies to Professor Mittel- 
maier, with whom he had had much correspondence 
upon legal matters before leaving America. 

But his European days were now drawing to a 
close. His friends were afraid that longer sojourn 
abroad would retard his progress in his profes- 
sion, and those who knew him best, like Story and 
Hillard, advised him to hasten his return. Indeed, 



62 CHARLES SUMNER 

he Deeded no such admonition. He knew that his 
European experience had greatly " swelled the 
man's amount" ; but, as the months passed, he had 
times of serious depression. As he confided to 
Longfellow : "I now begin to think of hard work, 
of long days filled with uninteresting toil and 
humble gains. I sometimes have a moment of mis- 
giving, when I think of the certainties which I 
abandoned and of the uncertainties to which I re- 
turn." To Greene, his companion of fond Italian 
memories, he wrote: "To me is unchanging 
drudgery, where there are no flowers to pluck by 
the wayside — but the great grindstone of the law. 
There must I work. Sisyphus ' rolled the rock re- 
luctant up the hill,' and I am going home to do the 
same." To his brother George he acknowledged 
that he had spent more than five thousand dollars 
and could not afford to travel longer, adding : "I 
wish you a deeper purse than I have, health to en- 
joy Europe, and the ability to profit by what you 
see. It is a glorious privilege, that of travel. Let 
us make the most of it. Gladden my American ex- 
ile by flashes from the Old World." 

For a young man who could use such words, it 
was high time to get back to his native land and 
settle down to some serious work. From Heidelberg 
he went down the Rhine, and crossed to London, 
which he had left almost exactly a year before. In 
a stay of less than three weeks he could do nothing 
more than renew his acquaintance with a few of the 
many who had lavished kindnesses upon him. His 



EUROPEAN TRAVEL 63 

last dinner was with Hal lam, at whose house he met 
Milinan, Hayward, Francis Horner and others. 
Sumner had made a warm place for himself in 
many an English home. One of his friends wrote 
to him: "You have had better opportunities of 
seeing all classes of society and all that is interest- 
ing among us, than any other of your countrymen." 
It was the truth ; and to the end of his life Sumner 
retained a deep affection for England. This, how- 
ever, did not blind him to many of the evils in her 
society. Although he had been the recipient of un- 
precedented courtesies from English people, many 
of them members of the nobility, he remained a 
true republican, and could truthfully declare : "I 
have never sat in the palaces of England without 
being pained by the inequality of which the inordi- 
nate luxury was a token ; " the injustice of the 
English system of representation and the burden of 
primogeniture he clearly recognized and deplored. 
Yet he felt that the two nations were one people in 
race and in history, and it was to be one of the 
greatest objects of his life to remove all sources of 
discord between them, for to him the thought that they 
should ever be at war with each other was monstrous. 
On the 3d of May, 1840, Sumner landed in New 
York, after an absence from America of nearly two 
years and a half, — a stalwart man of twenty -nine, 
with fresh memories of delightful days of study and 
leisurely travel, reluctantly returning to gather up 
the loose threads of a petty law practice, without a 
glimmer of what the future had in store for him. 



CHAPTER IV 

a NO. 4 COURT STREET" 

Upon his return to his native city, Sumner found 
everywhere a warm welcome. His social successes 
abroad commended him to Boston's most exclusive 
society, at the head of which stood a group of 
families, closely related by marriage and by busi- 
ness interests, and quick to resent alien thought or 
non- conformity to their standards in social and 
political action. George Bancroft, who had be- 
come prominent in the counsels of the Democratic 
party, felt the chill following his apostasy from the 
Whig faith which held the allegiance of Boston's 
first families, and Sumner was in time to feel the 
weight of similar social disapproval. But while 
he was still a prime favorite in Boston society, 
there were other associations which brought him 
greater enjoyment. There were chance meetings 
with congenial spirits like Hawthorne and Frances 
Kerable. He now became a frequent and an admir- 
ing visitor to the studio of Washington Allston. 
Rufus Choate's office was in the same building with 
his own, and they found many interests in common. 
Among the new friendships that with William H. 
Prescott was an unfailing joy. Dr. Channing, 
whom Sumner later described as "one of the 



"NO. 4 COURT STREET" 65 

purest, brightest, greatest minds of this age . . . 
my friend, and, I may almost say, idol for nearly 
ten years," now honored the young man with his 
confidence and relied upon him for collaboration 
and criticism as to his later writings. 

But most of all, Sumner rejoiced in the fellow- 
ship of the "Five of Clubs," who now renewed 
their meetings with unbroken ranks. With Hillard 
there was the delight of constant intercourse at the 
office ; of a Saturday, Sumner generally went to 
Craigie House to dine and spend the night with 
Longfellow, and here they were usually joined by 
Felton. He often visited Cleveland at Pine Bank, 
. and it was here that he met Mrs. Kemble. After 
Cleveland's death, his place in the group was taken 
by Dr. Samuel G. Howe, the talented superin- 
tendent of the Perkins Institution for the Blind. 
His acquaintance with Sumner dated from the day 
when the two met while fighting in support of the 
mayor to suppress a nativist riot. They were to 
stand shoulder to shoulder in many another hard 
fight, and in Dr. Howe and his accomplished wife 
Sumner was for years to find two of his dearest 
friends. 

The Sumner who returned from Europe was quite 
a different man in externals from the slender 
student of three years before. He had gained 
greater fulness of face and of figure, and his friends 
noted that he had " been very materially improved 
under the hands of a London tailor" and looked 
quite like an Englishman. 



60 CHARLES SUMNER 

While in Rome, Simmer had been saddened by 
the news of the death of his father, for whom he 
had always had a filial regard, though there was 
little congeniality between the two. Sheriff Sumner 
led a gloomy, Puritanical life, and within his own 
family his was a rigid rule, which could not fail to 
antagonize such natures as Charles and his vivacious 
brother, George. When Sumner had escaped to 
Europe from the potestas of this stern pater J 'am Mas, 
he still felt for his brothers and sisters and wrote to 
his father urging that for the younger children a 
milder regime might be adopted. The rigor in the 
home was somewhat relaxed the following year, but 
Sumner's intervention was resented, and from that 
time no letters passed between father and son. 
This lack of cordial sympathy with his father was 
a grief to him for many years. 

For several months after his return, Sumner did 
not attempt to resume practice. It was the summer 
season, when legal work was not pressing, and he 
devoted this period to making visits, renewing ac- 
quaintances and keeping up his enormous corre- 
spondence with friends abroad. In September, 
however, he began to put in long hours at No. 4 
Court Street. But it was hard to get acclimated. 
Later he confessed that this year was the least pro- 
ductive of his life. Practice came but slowly. 
There was more or less work to be done. He 
shared with Hillard the office business, and Story 
and Greenleaf enlisted his services in some cases in 
which they were interested. Sumner's most im- 



II 



NO. 4 COUET STREET" 67 



portant case was one in which he succeeded Green - 
leaf in contesting the validity of the Phillips patent 
for friction matches. It had already been in the 
courts for five years. Sumner devoted himself to 
the matter with great assiduity, but it dragged on 
for three years more. At the final trial it occupied 
eleven days before the jury ; in closing Sumner spoke 
ten hours, and upon the action of tort secured a 
verdict in favor of his client. 

He worked with dogged persistency, and in time 
might have become a lawyer of some eminence. 
Large money returns did not allure him, although, 
in view of his scanty income and the debts incurred 
for his travel, — debts which it is supposed his 
mother finally paid from the estate, — it was a satis- 
faction when he could report : " Business calls. I 
charged one client yesterday, as part of my fee in 
a case, six hundred dollars. He had the grace to 
say that it was no more than he expected, and not 
so much as I deserved." But such fees came sel- 
dom, and it was not long before Sumner's friends 
recognized that there were serious obstacles in the 
way of his attaining distinguished success at the 
bar. For much of the lawyer's routine work lie 
seemed to have an insuperable repugnance. 1 To a 

1 " He was not formed for a jury lawyer, when the jury was 
less than a nation or mankind. . . . Sumner's legal mind, 
at this rime and throughout his life, was largely moulded, 
trained to the contemplation of great principles and to lofty re- 
search. As one of his admiring comrades, himself a renowned 
lawyer, says of him, ' In sporting terms, he had a good eye for 
country, but no scent for a trail.'" — G. W. Curtis, Orations, 
Vol. Ill, p. 210. 



68 CHAELES SUMNER 

friend he once wrote: "I found the bill of costs 
without understanding it j and I sometimes believe 
that it is not in my power to understand anything 
which concerns such matters." William Wetmore 
Story, another young man of high aspirations who 
had not yet found himself, was then a law student 
at "No. 4," and has left an interesting picture of 
life in that office. Of Sumner he writes : "He 
would talk to me by the hour of the great jurists, 
and their lives, and habits of thought. . . . 
Hillard and he and I used to talk infinitely, not 
only of law, but of poetry and general literature 
and authors, when business would allow, — nay, 
sometimes when it would not allow ; but who can 
resist temptation with such tastes as we all had? " 
It was evident that the fears of his friends and his 
own misgivings were being realized : in his "Ameri- 
can exile," he could find no enthusiasm for his 
work. The keen-eyed student at his side noticed 
that ' ' after the flush of those exciting days abroad, 
his office and daily occupations seemed dull and 
gray. . . . America seemed flat to him after 
Europe." His letters to friends abroad show where 
his heart lay. To Lieber he wrote: "Never at 
any time since I have been at the bar have I been 
more punctual and faithful. Pocket that, ye croak- 
ers, who said that Europe would spoil me for office 
work ! Still, I will not disguise from you, my dear 
Lieber, that T feel, while I am engaged upon these 
things, that, though I earn my daily bread, I lay up 
none of the bread of life. My mind, soul, heart, 



"NO. 4 COUET STKEET" 69 

are not improved or invigorated by the practice of 
my profession ; by overhauling papers, old letters, 
and sifting accounts, in order to see if there be any- 
thing on which to plant an action. The sigh will 
come for a canto of Dante, a rhapsody of Homer, a 
play of Schiller. But I shall do my devoir." 

In virtual acknowledgment of failure in his 
practice, Sumner gradually turned more aud more 
to outside tasks. In the absence of Judge Story, 
he lectured as a substitute in the law school in 1842 
and again the following year. He renewed his 
writing for various legal magazines upon his favorite 
topics, — judges, lawyers, and publicists. He was a 
careful aud keen critic, always eager to commend 
what was of merit, but scathing in denunciation of 
bad work, so that he sometimes aroused deep resent- 
ment. In one instance a writer's article was so cut 
up that he came on from New York to Boston, in- 
tending to challenge the critic to a duel, but Sum- 
ner's fortunate absence from the city gave wrath 
time to cool. In the autumn following his return 
from Europe he had brought out the third volume 
of his "Keports" of Judge Story's Circuit Court 
opinions. The task of the court reporter was dis- 
tinctly congenial to Sumner. Although he re- 
peatedly declared that he did not know the office 
that was worth asking for, or asking any influence 
to procure, he acknowledged that, with a single 
exception, there was one which he might prefer 
to any in the country and an appointment to 
which would be agreeable to him, if it came un- 



70 CHARLES SUMNEE 

solicited on his part. This office of his preference 
was undoubtedly that of Reporter of the Supreme 
Court of the United States, held at the time by his 
old friend, Mr. Peters. He would have enjoyed its 
drudgery. Moreover, Sumner was in a similar 
position to that of his father, when he became 
sheriff: with no liking for and no prospect of 
marked success in the work of the practicing 
lawyer, he would have welcomed the fixed salary 
which attached to this office. But in 1843 when 
the vacancy occurred, it was filled during Judge 
Story's absence. And so another door was closed. 

Early in 1844 Sumner undertook a heart-breaking 
task : for the sum of $2,000 he contracted to anno- 
tate the " Equity Reports" of Francis Yesey, Jr., 
in twenty volumes, agreeing to make ready one vol- 
ume every two weeks. He began this work April 
10th ; but it soon became evident that the task was 
altogether too heavy for the allotted time, yet the 
publishers refused an extension of even a single 
month. Sumner bent to the work, making diligent 
use of the rich material which had accumulated 
since the publication of Vesey, and adding — an un- 
usual feature, but one peculiarly congenial to his 
cast of mind — biographical sketches of the judges 
and lawyers mentioned in the text. The edition was 
dedicated to Judge Story, and was very favorably 
reviewed by law journals ; one declared : " In what 
may be called the literature of the law, he [Sumner] 
has no rival among us." But " the dreary, never- 
lightening task "soon proved too great even for 



"NO. 4 COURT STREET" 71 

Sumner's splendid physique. With ouly four vol- 
umes completed, he succumbed to a fever, and for 
mauy days his life huug in the balance. Then grad- 
ually his extraordinary vitality reasserted itself. 
During his illness his bedside was sought by many 
sympathetic friends; the members of the "Five of 
Clubs," Prescott and Bancroft were among the most 
constant, Many a tender message from England 
showed how wide-spread was the solicitude for his 
recovery. Strength returned but slowly. It was 
not till November that he was able to get back to his 
office. Meantime, the wretched task which had 
broken him down had been carried on by others. 
Nine volumes still remained for his annotation. At 
last, in May, he could report: "The edition (in 
twenty volumes) is all printed ; and that millstone 
has fallen from my neck." 

In the months of his convalescence Sumner had 
discovered in himself a new appreciation of beauty 
in nature. He spent some weeks in a delightful 
round of visits with friends in the Berkshires. 
Here he renewed his acquaintance with Mrs. Kem- 
ble, with whom he enjoyed horseback riding. On 
his way home, he had the pleasure of meeting in 
New York Crawford, whom he had not seen since 
he left Rome, and whose career had been in no small 
degree assured by Sumner's commendation to his 
Boston friends. But he was soon called home by 
sad news. His beautiful and best loved sister, Mary, 
had been in failing health for several years. Her 
death was a great grief to Charles, who had always 



72 CHABLES SUMKEK 

loved her tenderly ; many references to her in his 
letters afford some of the most intimate and beauti- 
ful glimpses of his character. 

Sumner, himself, felt little attachment to life. 
Again and again, upon the death of some friend, he 
would exclaim: "Why was he selected who was 
reluctant to go, and another left who has little pleas- 
ure in staying V J When, in the crisis of his illness, 
the physician told him that his case was incurable, 
and that, if he should live, he would never be able 
to do anything, Sumner replied that he did not 
shrink from death but that to pass through life doing 
nothing, perhaps a "driveler and a show," was 
more than he could bear. A few weeks later he 
wrote to Howe : ' ' For such a signal recovery another 
person would feel unbounded gratitude. I am going 
to say what will offend you ; but what I trust God 
will pardon. Since my convalescence I have 
thought much and often whether I have any just 
feeling of gratitude that my disease was arrested. 
Let me confess to you that I cannot find it in my 
bosom. . . . Why was I spared ? For me there 
is no future of usefulness or happiness. ' ' 

This period brought to Sumner broadened associa- 
tions along various lines. In the summer following 
his return from Europe, he took his father's place 
in the Society of the Cincinnati. In 1844 he was 
elected to membership in the American Antiquarian 
Society, and in the same year he became a corre- 
sponding member of the New York Historical Society. 
Some effective popular expositions of legal princi- 



"NO. 4 COUET STKEET" 73 

pies, which Sumner had contributed to Boston pa- 
pers, led the friends of Alexander Slidell Mackenzie 
to appeal to the young lawyer to come to the defense 
of that commander in the Somers mutiny contro- 
versy. 1 To bring public opinion to Mackenzie's 
support was the task urged upon Sumner, and in 
response to it he contributed to the North American 
Review 2 a convincing article, in which with great 
force he argued that the real question at issue was 
neither the actual guilt of the conspirators nor the 
actual necessity for their execution, but their ap- 
parent guilt and the apparent necessity, as carefully 

1 Upon this United States brig-of-war, September 12, 1842, 
there had sailed for the coast of Africa a number of apprentice 
boys from the Naval School, and Philip Spencer, son of John 
C. Spencer, at the time Secretary of War, held the rank of mid- 
shipman. He was a breeder of mischief throughout the voyage, 
and it was discovered that he was the ringleader in a conspiracy 
to seize the ship, murder the officers, and hoist the pirate's flag. 
Some of the conspirators were put in confinement ; but this de- 
veloped so mutinous a spirit among the crew that the com- 
mander, whose intention had been to bring all the prisoners to 
the United States for trial, decided to take the formal advice 
of his officers. This council made a careful investigation, as the 
result of which they signed a report in which they — "bearing 
in mind our duty to our God, our country and to the service " 
— advised that Spencer and two of his confederates be imme- 
diately hanged at the yard-arm, a sentence which was executed 
four days before the brig reached St. Thomas. Spencer and 
one of his confederates had not only made full confession of 
guilt, but acknowledged the justice of the penalty. Heated 
discussion, however, straightway arose as to the guilt of the 
second confederate. Commander Mackenzie was brought before 
a court-martial, whose sessions of forty days resulted in his ac- 
quittal, a verdict which President Tyler confirmed. Neverthe- 
less, by virtue of his position as Secretary of War, Spencer's 
father and his friends were able to arouse very severe censure 
of Commander Mackenzie's action. 

2 Vol. LVII, pp. 195-241. 



74 CHAELES SUMNER 

weighed by conscientious men, who felt full respon- 
sibility for the United States vessel and the lives 
committed to their charge. This article exercised 
wide-spread influence. For this defense Mackenzie 
himself felt the deepest gratitude, which he showed 
by entertaining Sumner at his home and by a mes- 
sage of appreciation and good-will in a sealed letter 
opened after his death. 1 

Of the novelties of the day, phrenology for a time 
aroused Sumner's interest. With his friend, Dr. 
Howe, he performed some experiments which seemed 
to him to " show clearly that our braios are mapped 
out as the phrenologists have described." He pro- 
cured a plaster cast, and set himself to studying it 
with great earnestness. Several years later he up- 
braided the editor of the North American Review for 
" intolerance of mind in having treated phrenology 
flippantly." But this interest soon ceased to have 
any hold upon him. 

The a temperance" movement, which in these 
years exercised a great deal of political influence, 

1 It is interesting to note that this Commander Alexander 
SI i dell Mackenzie was an own brother of John Slidell, who was 
senator from Louisiana at the time of Sumner's election to the 
Senate. A few weeks later the two were guests at the same 
hotel in Saratoga, but on being introduced to Sumner, Slidell's 
manner was very reserved ; he declined an invitation from a 
common friend to meet Sumner at dinner, explaining a few 
days later that, while grateful for Sumner's " chivalrous and 
zealous advocacy " of his brother, his social relations could not 
he candid with a man of Sumner's "avowed purpose toexclude 
in his region the class to which he [slidell] belonged from the 
courtesies of social life and the common rites of humanity." 
After Sumner entered the Senate, however, the two men for 
some time were upon friendly terms. 



"NO. 4 COURT STREET" 75 

did not appeal to Sumner. He was temperate in 
his own habits ; he j ustified the moderate use of 
wine, and felt no sympathy with any political move- 
ment having prohibition as its object. 

Sumner's brother, Horace, was for a time a mem- 
ber of the Brook Farm community and his college 
friend, Browne, tried hard to interest Sumner in the 
transcendental philosophy there taught and prac- 
ticed. But Sumner refers in rather contemptuous 
tone to his brother's bucolic employments. He be- 
lieved that humanity's triumphs were to be won not 
in an isolated community, but in the ranks with his 
fellows. 

As a young man Sumner had taken very seriously 
his duty as the oldest brother to encourage the 
younger members of the family to do their best in 
their studies. While in Europe he had written 
anxious letters to President Quincy and Judge 
Story, urging that the standards of scholarship at 
Harvard be raised. In these early years of his 
practice, accordingly, Horace Mann found in him 
an ardent supporter of his propaganda for the pro- 
motion of popular education. In a highly favor- 
able review, he commended Mann's report of Euro- 
pean systems of education. In 1844 he accepted the 
Whig nomination for one of the two members of the 
school committee from his ward. The other Whig 
candidate was elected, but Sumner was defeated by 
a native American. In the belief that the equip- 
ment of the normal schools of the state was entirely 
inadequate, in 1845 Sumner acted as chairman of a 



76 CHAELES SUMNER 

committee which petitioned the legislature in favor 
of the erection of two new buildings. He personally 
solicited subscriptions and even incurred far heavier 
financial responsibility than he had a right to af- 
ford, in order to accomplish that end. 

In view of the career which was so soon to open be- 
fore him, it is surprising that up to this point Sumner 
apparently felt neither any aptitude nor any liking 
for politics. Returning to America in 1840, he wrote 
a few months later to an English friend : " Our pol- 
itics are shabby enough. . . . They [the Whigs] 
proclaimed Harrison the candidate of the ' log-cabin 
and hard-cider class. ' And this vulgar appeal is 
made by the party professing the monopoly of intel- 
ligence and education in the country ! ' ' To his 
brother George he declared: "There are some 
(among whom I am willing to be counted) who think 
success obtained by such vulgar means of very 
doubtful value. But the greater part think nothing 
of these things, and are now in full cry, running 
down their game." He took no part in the cam- 
paign, and it is not known for whom he voted. At 
the time of the next presidential election, he was re- 
covering from a serious illness ; and there is no in- 
dication that he felt any interest in the contest. 
The distinctive tenets of the Whig party, its policy 
as to the tariff and the national bank, however 
strongly they commended it to the commercial aris- 
tocracy of Boston, could make slight appeal to a 
man of Sumner's idealism. But in contrast with 
their opponents, the Whigs seemed to him less 



"NO. 4 COURT STREET" 77 

under the dominance of the slave power and more 
disposed to high-minded and peaceful dealings with 
foreign states. Like John Quincy Adams, whom 
of all American public men he most admired, Sum- 
ner still marched with the Whigs, because he 
''thought this party represented the moral senti- 
ments of the country, — that it was the party of Hu- 
manity." 



CHAPTER V 

"the true grandeur of nations" 

Among the institutions that had fostered the 
civic pride, for which from early days Boston had 
been famous, the Fourth of July oration played an 
important part. Boston has never lacked self- con- 
sciousness. In the days just before the outbreak of 
the Revolution, she saw in herself— as England saw 
in her — the protagonist of the colonists in their as- 
sertion of what they deemed their rights as British 
subjects, and local pride speedily cast about certain 
scenes and actors an aureole, which quite transfig- 
ured them in memory. Thus, the event of March 
5, 1770, characterized by one critical twentieth 
century historian as a " serious affray" in which 
" the mob was fired upon by the angry and fright- 
ened soldiers," forthwith found its place in local 
annals as the ' ' Boston Massacre. ' ' Its victims were 
added to the noble army of the martyrs, to be com- 
memorated to remote generations by the monument 
on Boston Common to the almost mythical Crispus 
Attucks and his fellows. 

On the very first anniversary of this event the 
citizens of Boston came together to listen to an ap- 
propriate oration, and the precedent was observed 
in each succeeding year. Soon after the close of the 



" THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS " 79 

Revolutionary War, the citizens of Boston, at a 
town-meeting in Faneuil Hall, adopted a resolution 
which, after asserting that this celebration had 
" been found to be of eminent advantage to the cause 
of America in disseminating the principles of virtue 
and patriotism among her citizens," declared that 
from that time forward "the anniversary of the 
4th day of July, A. d. 1776, . . . shall be con- 
stantly celebrated by the delivery of a public ora- 
tion ... in which the orator shall consider the 
feelings, manners, and principles which led to this 
great national event, as well as the important and 
happy effects, whether general or domestic, which 
already have, and will forever continue, to flow 
from this auspicious epoch." And so for threescore 
years and more this patriotic festival had been ob- 
served, the oration being delivered in Faneuil Hall, 
the Old South Church, or in one of the larger as- 
sembly halls. 

The choice of orator usually fell upon some prom- 
ising young man, and the typical oration, as John 
Adams (who had listened with fortitude to many of 
them) declared, was characterized by "juvenile in- 
genuity," and usually set forth in conventional 
phrases admiration for Greek and Roman heroism, 
evidencing little critical weighing of the events of the 
Revolution, or originality in the discussion of pres- 
ent-day problems. 

In 1845, at whose suggestion it is not known, 
Charles Sumner was notified by a committee of the 
city government that he had been chosen orator for 



80 CHAELES SUMXER 

Independence Day. The invitation came so late as 
to allow hardly two months for preparation. His 
correspondence shows that he accepted with a hesi- 
tation not unnatural in one so untrained for such an 
effort. He made no demonstration in getting to 
work upon it, and his friends, particularly Felton, 
repeatedly urged him to devote himself to his writ- 
ing with diligence, mindful that he was to have a 
" numerous and distinguished audience." 

Heralded by the boom of guns, the sun rose clear 
on the morning of July 4th. The streets, the Com- 
mon and the Public Garden were soon astir with an 
animated throng. There was a procession of 800 
school-children in gala attire. The national colors 
were everywhere displayed. In the harbor lay the 
United States ship-of-war, Ohio, brilliantly be- 
decked with flags. Soon after ten, under escort of 
the Washington Light Guard, the officers of the 
city government, led by the mayor and the orator 
of the day, marched from the City Hall to Tremont 
Temple. Seated upon the platform, Sumner 
watched the assembling audience. Behind him 
was a choir of young girls from the Boston public 
schools, all dressed in white. Below, at his left, 
his eye rested on the Washington Light Guard, be- 
hind their officers, while at his right in the front 
seats in full uniform sat the superior officers of the 
commonwealth's militia and of the United States 
army and navy. It was felt that in previous years 
the Federal branches of the service had been some- 
what slighted at this festival, and so it was in re- 






1 ' THE TEUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS ' ' 81 

spouse to special invitations that these officers from 
the navy-yard, from the forts and from the visiting 
Ohio, graced the occasion by their august presence. 
Of that brilliant audience of more than 2,000, at 
least one in every twenty was in military attire. 

The invocation and the reading of the Declaration 
of Independence were followed by patriotic songs 
by the choir. Then the mayor introduced Sumner. 
It was a scene long to be remembered when this tall 
and handsome young man stepped forward for the 
first time to face a great popular assembly gathered 
to hear him. The " Gawky " Sumner of Latin 
School days had developed a splendid presence. 
He now stood six feet four inches in height, and 
his frame already gave promise of the commanding 
figure of his later years. His well-cut face, sur- 
mounted by masses of dark hair, kindled with 
animation as he spoke. Always fond of rather 
distinctive dress, he wore to-day a blue dress-coat 
with brass buttons, and waistcoat and trousers of 
white. His voice was of great power, and he used 
it with skill. His gestures were his own, the most 
characteristic being the swinging of his hand over 
his head. Referring to his manuscript only for 
statistics, he spoke for more than two hours, yet he 
held the close attention of his audience to the end. 

With but a brief introduction, in which in words 
closely modeled upon Plato he urged that our most 
worthy tribute to the Fathers of the Republic would 
be found in striving to excel them in virtue and to 
increase the inheritance which they had bequeathed, 



82 CHARLES SUMNER 

Sumner proceeded to announce the theme of his 
oration, the inquiry : " What, in our age, are the 
true objects of national ambition ; what is truly 
national glory, national honor ; what is the true 
grandeur of nations ? " Tersely illustrating his sub- 
ject by contrasts, he made timely reference to the 
Texas and Oregon issues, declaring " a war with 
Mexico would be mean and cowardly ; with Eng- 
land it would be at least bold, but parricidal." 
And forthwith he laid down his main thesis : "In 
our age there can be no peace that is not honorable ; 
there can be no war that is not dishonorable." ! 
The place, the occasion, the audience, all combined 
to make the announcement of such a proposition 
sensational, but these considerations did not deter 
the speaker. With a wealth of illustration from 
history and poetry he developed his theme : he ex- 
posed the true character of war by noting how 
military heroes were lauded by the names of brute 
and savage beasts ; he emphasized the futility of war 
in that its objects are often unattaiued, as in the War 
of 1812, where the alleged causes were not removed 
by the Treaty of Ghent ; he described vividly the 
senseless wager of battle, which found its belated sur- 
vival in war ; and he denounced in scathing terms the 
approval which misguided patriotism, and social 
esteem and even the church had bestowed upon the 
unreasoning appeal to brute force. With tremendous 

1 In his Works, Sumner softened this by putting it in the 
form of a question. "Can there be, in our age, any peace 
that is not honorable, any war that is not dishonorable ? ' ' 
Vol. I, p. 9. 



1 < THE TEUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS ' » 83 

power lie emphasized the enormous waste involved 
in military preparations and manoeuvres, — expenses, 
he insisted, which were worse than wasted, since 
often instead of assuring peace, they served only to 
incite war, whereas the spirit of comity and con- 
ciliation ensured just and lasting blessings; he 
urged that the United States lead in a movement 
toward disarmament, and closed w T ith an eloquent 
presentation of the moral virtues in which the true 
grandeur of nations consists. 

Among the passages of most power was an effect- 
ive comparison of the cost to the community of 
Harvard University and of the Ohio, then lying in 
Boston harbor, and whose officers were at that mo- 
ment, as guests of the city, sitting at his feet : 

" There now swings idly at her moorings in this 
harbor a ship-of-the-line, the Ohio . . . $834,845 
[has been] the actual cost at this moment of that 
single ship, — more than $100,000 beyond all the 
available accumulations of the richest and most 
ancient seat of learning in the land. Choose ye, 
my fellow citizens of a Christian state, between 
the two caskets, — that wherein is the loveliness of 
knowledge and truth, or that which contains the 
carrion death ! " 

He drove the lesson home still harder by showing 
that the sum annually lavished upon the Ohio was 
more than four times the yearly expenditures of 
Harvard University. 1 

1 Works, Vol. I, p. 81. Sixty years have not made Sumner's 
line of argument obsolete. Naval expenditures for the year 
ending the week before Sumner uttered these words were in 



84 CHARLES SUMNER 

A passage of genuine pathos set forth the 
brutality of war, relieved only by deeds of chivalry, 
which it borrowed'froni peace. 

" But war crushes with bloody heel all justice, 
all happiness, all that is godlike in man. . . . 
True, it cannot be disguised that there are passages 
in its dreary annals cheered b} r deeds of generosity 
and sacrifice. But the virtues which shed their 
charm over its horrors are all borrowed of 
Peace. . . . The flowers of gentleness, of kind- 
liness, of fidelity, of humanity, which flourish in 
unregarded luxuriance in the rich meadows of 
Peace, receive unwonted admiration when we dis- 
cern them in War, — like violets shedding their 
perfume on the perilous edge of the precipice, be- 
yond the smiling borders of civilization. . . . 
God be praised that Sidney, on the field of battle, 
gave with dying hand the cup of cold water to the 
dying soldier ! That single act of self- forgetful 
sacrifice has consecrated the fenny field of Zutphen 
far, oh ! far beyond its battle ; it has consecrated 
thy name, gallant Sidney, beyond any feat of thy 
sword, beyond any triumph of thy pen ! But there 
are hands outstretched elsewhere than on fields of 
blood for so little as a cup of cold water. The 
world is full of opportunities for deeds of kindness. 

round numbers $6,300,000; for the year 1908 they were 
$118,725,000. This morning's paper tells of an amendment 
(February 16. 1909) cutting down the appropriation for each of 
two new battle-ships to §4 500,000, not including armor or 
armament. Even in these days of lame benefactions, that ex- 
penditure for each unarmed battle-ship is excelled by the pro- 
ductive funds of not more than ten American universities. 
Were Sumner speaking to-day, he would further emphasize the 
appalling rate at which battle-ships depreciate and become 
obsolete. 



" THE TEUE GEANDEUE OF NATIONS » 85 

Let ine not be told, then, of the virtues of War. 
Let not the acts of generosity and sacrifice which 
have triumphed on its fields be invoked in its de- 
fense. In the words of Oriental imagery, the 
poisonous tree, though watered by nectar, can pro- 
duce only the fruit of death I " * 

Truly prophetic were his references to emancipa- 
tion and to disarmament : 

"What glory of battle in England's annals will 
not fade by the side of that great act of justice, by 
which her legislature, at a cost of one hundred 
million dollars, gave freedom to eight hundred thou- 
sand slaves ! And when the day shall come (may 
these eyes be gladdened by its beams ! ) that shall 
witness an act of greater justice still, — the peaceful 
emancipation of three millions of our fellow men, 
1 guilty of a skin not colored as our own,' now held 
in gloomy bondage under the Constitution of our 
country, — then shall there be a victory, in compari- 
son with which that of Bunker Hill shall be as a 
farthing candle held up to the sun. That victory 
shall need no monument of stone. It shall be writ- 
ten on the grateful hearts of uncounted multitudes, 
that shall proclaim it to the latest generation. It 
shall be one of the great landmarks of civilization ; 
nay, more, it shall be one of the links of the golden 
chain by which humanity shall connect itself with 
the throne of God." 2 

"Let us now, in this age of civilization, sur- 
rounded by Christian nations, be willing to follow 
the successful example of William Penn, surrounded 
by savages. Let us, while we recognize the tran- 
scendent ordinances of God, the Law of Right and 

1 Works, Vol. I, p. 125. 2 Works, Vol. I, p. 127. 



86 CHARLES SUMNER 

the Law of Love, — the double suns which illumine 
the moral universe, — aspire to the true glory, and 
what is higher than glory, the great good of taking 
the lead in the disarming of the nations. Let us 
abandon the system of preparation for war in time 
of peace as irrational, unchristian, vainly prodigal 
of expense, and having a direct tendency to excite 
the very evil against which it professes to guard. " 1 

Such was the oration which greeted this conserva- 
tive Boston audience, accustomed on the Fourth of 
July to listen to " young men of promising genius, 
whose convictions were conformable to the opinions 
of the moment." It is needless to say that the open- 
ing paragraphs produced a sensation and that what 
followed gave rise to intense excitement. It was 
evident at the outset that here was no mere elocu- 
tionist or phrase-maker, but a man of vigorous 
thought, ready and perhaps too eager to assail what 
he believed to be error, no matter how high en- 
throned. His references to the Texas and Oregon 
policies of the Polk administration called out open 
dissent from his audience. Later the opposition 
grew more bitter, for the young orator exclaimed : 
"What is the use of the standing army? What 
is the use of the navy?" and in sarcastic vein he 
referred to the "farcical 2 discipline," and to "men 
closely dressed in padded and well-buttoned coats of 
blue, besmeared with gold, surmounted by a huge 

1 Works, Vol. I, p. 119. 

2 Tn revising the oration for his works, he substituted "pain- 
ful " for this word ! Works, Vol. I, p. 91. 



" THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS » 87 

mountain cap of bearskin, with a barbarous device 
typical of brute force, a tiger, painted on oilskin, 
tied with leather to their backs, — Christians recogni- 
zing the example of beasts as worthy of imitation 
by man." To many of the military guests in the 
audience it seemed that they had been "officially 
assailed by the speaker as well as personally in- 
sulted." They decided forthwith to leave the 
hall in a body, and were only dissuaded by the 
adjutant-general of the commonwealth, whom they 
urged to lead them, but who insisted that such a 
proceeding would seem discourteous, since they 
were all guests of the city. As the excited audience 
was dispersing, a prominent merchant is said to 
have shouted : " Well, if that young man is going 
to talk in that way, he cannot expect Boston to hold 
him up ! m 

According to long- established custom, after the 
oration the members of the city government and the 
invited guests repaired to Faneuil Hall, where a 
banquet was followed by a long list of toasts. It 
was significant of the feeling of that day, that every 

1 Men of very different views agreed as to the probable effect of 
this oration upon Sumner's future. "The crowd dissolved; 
the audience surges into the street. One man goes up to Mayor 
Elliott [Eliot?] and says: 'Mr. Elliott, what do you think of 
the oration?' 'The young man has cut his throat, sir ! ' '' — 
Wendell Phillips, in an oration on Sumner reported in Bos- 
ton Daily Advertiser, March 3, 1877. "I suppose he has com- 
mitted a social felo de se by it. I look upon his fearless book 
[this oration] as the tombstone of his consideration in the 
minds of nine-tenths of this Infidel Community." — Letter of J. 
R. Lowell to H. W. Longfellow, Aug. 13, 1845', Lowell's Letters, 
Vol. I, p. 95. 



88 CHAELES SUMNER 

one of the many speakers referred to Sumner's 
oration with u censure, ridicule, or some kind of 
criticism." This dissent ran the whole range from 
the conservative and moderate qualification of the 
historian Palfrey and of Congressman R. C. Winthrop 
to coarse and personal abuse from a lawyer who had 
long been connected with the militia, and whose 
remarks called forth loud applause from the military 
guests. Sumner bore all these criticisms with entire 
equanimity, and when given an opportunity to 
reply, contented himself with a graceful compliment 
to the choir of the day. 

In the mass of comment upon the oration, aside 
from the dissent from its main proposition that there 
can be no war which is honorable, there was much 
criticism upon two matters of taste and propriety. 
To the charge that his theme was out of harmony 
with the spirit of the day, it may be replied that he 
spoke with the utmost earnestness in behalf of a 
cause which he believed should enlist every patriot's 
support. Progress is not advanced by the insistence 
that every public speaker shall conform to the views 
which he believes to be held by the majority of his 
audience. Sumner chose neither his theme nor the 
manner of its development with the purpose of 
antagonizing his hearers. For several years in his 
letters and conversation there had frequently re- 
curred references to the brutality, the futility and 
the waste of war, which showed that these were 
thoughts over which he had long been brooding. 
On the other hand, there was much of validity 



1 ' THE TRUE GRANDEUR OF NATIONS ' » 89 

in the criticism that in various parts of his oration 
Sumner exhibited little tact or consideration for the 
feelings of many of his hearers. To the forceful 
presentation of his theme it was by no means neces- 
sary that he descend to- slurring remarks upon the 
dress and bearing of military leaders there present 
as highly honored guests of the city. 1 

In the weeks following the delivery of this ora- 
tion, there poured in upon Sumner hundreds of 
letters from all over the country, reflecting widely 
divergent opinions. One of the most cordial was 
from John A. Andrew, the future war governor of- 
Massachusetts, who in closing expressed his " grati- 
tude to Providence, that here, in our city of Boston, 
one has at last stepped forward to consecrate to 
celestial hopes the day—the great day — which 
Americans have at best heretofore held sacred only 
to memory." Theodore Parker's letter of hearty 
approval was the beginning of a friendship and a 
hearty cooperation that were to end only with death. 
In England as well as in America Sumner's oration 
attracted wide attention, its references to the pend- 
ing Oregon question giving it added point. An 

1 It is interesting to note a criticism which Sumner twenty- 
years later passed upou Bancroft's eulogy upon Lincoln. "I 
felt at the time that there was something wrong in such a 
speech when the diplomatic corps were official guests. . . . 
The chief error was in addressing such a speech to such guests. 
Either they should not have been invited, or the speech should 
have been what could be said in their presence without giving 
offense." March 15, 1865. But Sumner, himself, upon many a 
later occasion showed a strange insensibility to the pain which 
his words must inevitably have caused to hearers of normal 
make-up. 



90 CHAKLES SUMNER 

abridged edition of 7,000 copies was circulated by 
the several Peace Societies, and four or live editions 
of the entire oration were sold. 

To Sumner hardly less than to his friends that 
Fourth of July brought a revelation. It was the 
parting of the ways. Only a few months before, the 
shadows seemed to be settling thick about him. 
He was lonely and ill ; he felt that his life had been 
a failure, and wished that Death's summons might 
have been for him, instead of for those who found 
life a blessing. Now, at last, he caught a glimpse of 
a goal. He found that he could sway thousands by 
his eloquence, and the discovery quickened all the 
moral force within him. Aimlessness and depres- 
sion were flung aside. He would press toward the 
mark. 






CHAPTER VI 

SUMNER'S ENLISTMENT IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY 

RANKS 

From that Fourth of July his Court Street office 
could never again look the same to him. It had 
been the scene of dull routine, of editorial hack- 
work. Now he had found himself. The definite 
line that his effort should take was not yet clear, 
but his interest in the practice of law and in the 
study of jurisprudence fell into the background. 

His new aspirations had hardly been kindled 
when he met with a great sorrow in the death of 
Judge Story, to whom he was bound by the closest 
ties of affection and gratitude, which found worthy 
expression in his "Tribute of Friendship." The 
eminent jurist had repeatedly declared that as far as 
his professorship was concerned, he should die con- 
tent if Charles Sumner were to succeed him. But 
when the vacancy occurred, the position was not 
offered to Sumner. Nor did he expect it. As he 
wrote to his brother : " I am too much of a re- 
former in law to be trusted in a post of such com- 
manding influence as this has now become." The 
radicalism of his oration had not been agreeable 
to the members of the corporation. Sumner seems 
to have felt somewhat hurt at the evidence that he 
was no longer held in so high regard as formerly at 



92 CHARLES SUMNER 

his alma mater ; yet it is doubtful whether he would 
have accepted the position, for he felt that in such 
a professorship he would no longer be a free man. 

In the middle of the nineteenth century, to a 
young man of philanthropic impulses and blessed 
with the gift of tongues, one door opened wide. 
That was the New England Lyceum, then in its 
pristine vigor. In a way, it was a precursor of the 
university extension of a later generation. In 
many New England cities and towns the Lyceum 
arranged for a course of ten or a dozen lectures. 
The pay was small, rarely exceeding ten or fifteen 
dollars, but the opportunity for influence was great 
and attractive. The audience was certain to be 
made up of the most intelligent people of the com- 
munity. Divisive subjects, such as slavery, or dis- 
tinctly political topics, were tabooed, but the lec- 
turer might incidentally get very definitely before 
the people his views even upon such subjects. 
The Lyceum afforded a forum for the best thinkers 
of the day. It is creditable to the audiences that 
among the speakers most in demand were Emerson, 
Whipple, Holmes and Beecher. Even Choate and 
Webster did not scorn the lecture platform. For 
the five years following the delivery of the "True 
Grandeur of Nations," no lecturer was more wel- 
come before Lyceums than Charles Sumner, and 
here it was, as Whipple said, that he got a hold 
upon " earnest, progressive clergymen and warm- 
hearted, cultivated women, — perhaps the two 
strongest forces for the moral awakening of a com- 



IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY BANKS 93 

munit3 T , — such as no other American public man 
has gained." Here, too, he aroused the enthusi- 
asm of hundreds of young men who ten years later 
were to translate his ideals into practical politics. 

Sumner's Lyceum lectures were mostly upon 
three topics: "The Employment of Time," 
" White Slavery in the Barbary States," and " The 
Law of Human Progress." The second of these 
themes was obviously chosen to afford an opportu- 
nity to set forth by indirection the cruelties of 
American slavery. Printed in a small volume with 
abundant woodcuts, it had a wide circulation. 

A year after Sumner first challenged attention as 
an orator, he was invited to deliver the oration be- 
fore the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard, an 
occasion and an audience which have called forth 
their best from some of America's most eminent 
men. Upon the platform were Edward Everett, 
who had just been made president of the university, 
and Josiah Quincy, his predecessor in that office ; 
John Quincy Adams, Robert C. Winthrop, William 
Kent, who had recently been appointed to Story's 
professorship j and the Governor of Virginia. 
Dr. Edward Everett Hale tells of the profound im- 
pression which Sumner made upon young men like 
himself. His spendid presence dominated the au- 
dience. It had been the custom of speakers upon 
this solemn occasion to appear in the traditional 
black gown of the New England pulpit, but 
Sumner, in addressing a company of scholars, chose 
to appear before them not in the garb of a scholar 



94 CHAKLES SUMNER 

of 1631 but of the gentleman of 1846. Accordingly 
he stood forth in blue dress-coat with brass buttons, 
a buff waistcoat, white trousers and gaiters. And 
his manner was equally unconventional ; some of 
his hearers were quite aghast at seeing him in the 
fervor of his discourse turn his back upon his 
audience for several minutes while he addressed 
President Everett. Within a few months, four of 
the most eminent sons of Harvard had died. They 
had all been personal friends of Sumner, from whom 
he had gained much inspiration. It was therefore 
a congenial task which he essayed in commemora- 
ting these men in an oration upon the theme : ■ ' The 
Scholar (John Pickering) ; the Jurist (Joseph 
Story) ; the Artist (Washington Allston) ; and the 
Philanthropist (William E. Channing)." Many 
of his audience had been prejudiced against him as 
a theorist and radical, but he won their cordial sym- 
pathy and for more than two hours he held their 
rapt attention. The impression upon high-minded 
young men who heard him was one never to be 
effaced. The oration's deepest notes were struck 
in the passages which attacked slavery and war. 
Sumner later acknowledged that " in the sensitive 
condition of public sentiment at that time, such an 
effort would have found small indulgence if he had 
not placed himself behind four such names. While 
commemorating the dead, he was able to uphold 
liviug truth." 

In the chorus of acclaim which greeted this ad- 
dress, no words were more discerning than those of 



IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 95 

the venerable John Quiney Adams, who wrote to 
Sumner: "Casting my eyes backward no farther 
than the 4th of July of last year, when you set all the 
vipers of Alecto a- hissing by proclaiming the Chris- 
tian law of universal peace and love, and then cast- 
ing them forward perhaps not much farther, but be- 
yond my own allotted time, I see you have amission 
to perform. I look from Pisgah to the Promised 
Land ; you must enter upon it. . . . To the 
motto upon my seal {Alter i sceculo) add Delenda est 
servitus." 

In the next year or two, Sumner spoke with great 
acceptance as the commencement orator at Amherst 
College and Brown University upon "Fame and 
Glory," and at Union College upon "The Law of Hu- 
man Progress. " It is to be remembered that in these 
years the Mexican War, fought for the extension 
of slavery, was the subject most in men's minds, and 
Sumner's uncompromising treatment of these timely 
topics became a potent force in shaping public sen- 
timent. It was inevitable that the author of "The 
True Grandeur of Nations" should be drafted into 
the service of the Peace Movement. In 1849 he de- 
livered the annual address before the American 
Peace Society, discussing " the abolishment of the 
institution of war, and of the whole system as an es- 
tablished arbiter of justice in the Commonwealth of 
Nations." Read at the present day, Sumner's plea 
for "a Congress of Nations, with a high court of 
judicature, or arbitration established by treaties be- 
tween nations" seems prophetic of things which 



96 CHARLES SUMNER 

were to come half a century later, and of hopes even 
yet deferred. This address called out warm com- 
mendations from men with whom he was later to be 
closely associated, — among others, Palfrey and 
Seward. Although his activity in the Peace Society 
ended in the following year, Sumner's interest in 
this movement continued unabated. In the Senate 
he was the frequent champion of arbitration ; and 
in his will he left to Harvard College 81,000 in trust 
for an annual prize for the best dissertation by any 
student on " Universal Peace, and the methods by 
which war may be permanently superseded." 

In this period, 1845-47, Sumner was drawn into a 
controversy which could hardly have arisen in any 
other city in the world. For twenty years there had 
been in existence the Boston Prison Discipline So- 
ciety, with a membership made up of some of Bos- 
ton's most aristocratic and philanthropic citizens. 
The principal question then at issue concerned the 
merits of the separate (Pennsylvania) system as 
contrasted with the congregate (Auburn) system. 
The officers of the Boston society favored the latter, 
and at the annual meeting, in the Park Street 
Church, in 1845, the perfunctory reading of the sec- 
retary's report was followed by a motion for its ac- 
ceptance made by a prominent lawyer, who strongly 
condemned the Pennsylvania system. At that in- 
stant the dull monotony of the meeting came to an 
end, for near the front of the auditorium there rose 
a tall young man, in close-buttoned blue frock-coat. 
Mounting upon the rail of his pew, he passed rapidly 






IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 97 

from pew to pew until he stood upon the platform, 
where with but scant courtesy to the chairman he 
plunged into a scathing arraignment of the report, 
which he continued to assail for half an hour. Said 
an eyewitness: "It was like the descent of some 
unknown and unexpected god from Olympus. 
There was anger and fear and impatience on the 
platform ; but the congregation was with the 
speaker. He came like a breeze on a calm, dull 
day at sea." 

Sumner was urged to make this protest by Dr. 
Howe, whose penological studies had led him to be- 
lieve that the Society was doing gross injustice to 
the Pennsylvania system. Sumner's unwelcome in- 
terruption resulted in the appointment of a committee 
of investigation. The next year, and again the year 
following, the controversy was renewed. Its subject 
is too remote from present interest to make the men- 
tion of its incidents profitable ; but at the time it 
stirred the city profoundly. In 1847 on eight hot 
evenings in May and June Tremont Temple was 
thronged with eager listeners to these debates, last- 
ing till almost midnight. The chief attraction had 
come to be less the penological question at issue than 
the dauntless and unwearied champion who had 
entered the arena against the management of the So- 
ciety and its rich and conservative supporters. Al- 
though time seems to have given judgment against 
the Pennsylvania system, all Sumner's moral en- 
thusiasm was then aroused in what he believed was 
a battle for justice. In these debates he gained im- 



98 CHAKLES SUMNER 

mensely in self-control and in adroitness in dealing 
with opponents. One unfortunate result was that 
in the heat of his onslaught he little heeded the 
weight of his weapons, and, as many a time in later 
life, his words left wounds that never ceased to 
rankle, although he was quite unconscious of giving 
personal offense. An officer of the Society, who 
bore the brunt of the defense, was a man of the 
highest connections both by blood and by marriage 
in exclusive Boston society, and cold glances and 
curt greetings soon began to show Sumner how this 
' ' Boston ' ' could resent what it deemed an affront. 
Sumner had reached the parting of the ways. He 
had become an orator of high rank, but a career of 
any unity or stable effectiveness seemed far off. 
Moreover, he had aroused distrust if not aversion by 
his growing radicalism in American politics and by 
his avowed sympathy with ultra-democratic move- 
ments abroad, and also by the personalities which 
he had directed against some of Boston's most rep- 
resentative men. "What was his future to be? 
Should he curb the impulses of the radical and re- 
former and conform himself to the standards of the 
conservative and cultivated society that had shown 
him warm hospitality upon his return from Europe ! 
Hillard was making concessions which kept those 
doors open with friendly welcome for him ; and 
few men have been more susceptible to the charm of 
luxurious surroundings and of cultivated society 
than was Charles Sumner. Or should he put his 
enthusiasm and eloquence without restraint at the 



IN THE ANTI SLAVERY RANKS 99 

service of freedom and peace, and become a prophet 
of revolt ? The decision was hardly left to Sumner. 
The call of the times determined the answer. 

In no other state had the project to increase the 
power of slavery by the annexation of Texas aroused 
more opposition and resentment than in Massachu- 
setts. The spirit of the Puritans breathed in the 
address prepared by Webster, Charles Allen and 
S. C. Phillips, for the convention which assembled 
in Faneuil Hall, January 29, 1845, to voice the Bay 
State's sentiment: — "Massachusetts denounces the 
iniquitous project in its inception, and in every 
stage of its progress ; in its means and its end, and 
in all its purposes and pretenses of its authors." 
Yet not a few of the most influential Whigs held 
aloof from this protest, and when, a few weeks later, 
annexation became an accomplished fact, the Whig 
leaders as well as conservative business men showed 
a disposition to acquiesce and to try to focus atten- 
tion upon the tariff as the chief issue between parties. 

But it was clear that Southern leaders were aim- 
ing at the admission of Texas, that its influence 
might restore the balance in the Senate. Against 
this next step, all those Whigs whose opposition to 
slavery was a matter of principle joined in vigorous 
revolt. American party politics had seemed to 
Sumner sordid and repulsive, but now when the 
" Conscience Whigs" were brought together by 
their horror of the Texas "conspiracy," he did not 
hesitate as to where he should stand. 

From his earliest boyhood Sumner's associations 



100 CHARLES SUMNER 

had iDredisposed hiin against slavery. His father 
was a man of deep eonvictions as to the evil of the 
institution and outspoken in asserting the equal 
rights of men of every race. Sumner's first contact 
with slavery was in 1834. He had been brought up 
in Boston, had received the best that Harvard Col- 
lege could give, had finished his studies in the law 
school with distinguished credit, and was now mak- 
ing a leisurely trip to Washington. To his father 
he wrote : "The whole country [between Baltimore 
and Washington] was barren and cheerless. . . . 
For the first time I saw slaves, and my worst pre- 
conception of their appearance and ignorance did 
not fall as low as their actual stupidity. They ap- 
pear to be nothing more than moving masses of flesh, 
unendowed with anything of intelligence above the 
brutes. I have now an idea of the blight upon that 
part of our country in which they live." x 

It must be confessed that from this it would seem 
that the sight of men and women in bondage aroused 
little heat in the blood of this young Boston student. 
His aesthetic sensibilities were offended rather than 
his human sympathy kindled. The cause of the 
slave at first appealed to his head rather than to his 
heart. Nevertheless, the Liberator was the first 
paper to which he ever subscribed, and as early as 
183G he was raising the question with Lieber, then 
residing in South Carolina, whether emancipation 
were not practicable, and marveling that Lieber 
could endure the bondage of opinion at the South. 
1 February 24, 1834. 



IN THE ANT1 SLAVEKY KAXKS 101 

While in Europe Simmer discussed the subject with 
Sismondi, whom he fouud " a thorough Abolition- 
ist, aud astonished that our country will not take a 
lesson from the ample page of history and eradicate 
slavery." It was a gratification to Sumner's hered- 
itary sentiment of race-equality to find at the Con- 
vent ofPalazzuola " a native of Abyssinia, mingling 
in delightful and affectionate familiarity with the 
Franciscan friars, whose visitor and scholar he was." 
And among the listeners at lectures in the Ecole de 
Droit he was glad to see two or three blacks, or 
rather mulattoes, — two-thirds black, perhaps, — 
dressed quite a la mode, and having the easy, jaunty 
air of young men of fashion, who were well received 
by their fellow students. . . . Their color seemed 
to be no objection to them. I was glad to see this ; 
though with American impressions, it seemed very 
strange. It must be, then, that the distinction be- 
tween free blacks and whites among us is derived 
from education, and does not exist in the nature of 
things." Sumner showed his own sentiments as to 
race equality by canceling — as did Emerson — an en- 
gagement before a Lyceum which had adopted a 
rule for the exclusion of colored persons from their 
lectures, — a rule which his protest caused to be re- 
scinded. 

Upon his return to America, his first contact with 
slavery issues was in the question as to the right of 
inquiry to determine the nature of a suspected slaver 
on the high seas, aud in the Creole case. In both 
instances his writings were those of a jurist, but in 



102 CHARLES SUMNER 

the Creole controversy his human sympathies are 
frankly avowed. He collaborated with Dr. Chan- 
ning in his stern arraignment of Webster's letter 
upon this case. In Sumner's correspondence his 
opposition to slavery takes on a note of greater 
severity and there appear in germ some of the doc- 
trines which he was to develop later : — his conten- 
tion, for example, that slavery was purely a local 
institution, drawing its vitality from state laws ; 
and his insistence that i i the great moral blockade, 
with which the South was to be surrounded, be 
strengthened and more firmly established." He in- 
dignantly repudiated the notion that because North- 
ern opponents of slavery were debarred from inter- 
fering politically with the evil in the states where it 
existed, they were called upon to suppress their 
sympathy with the slave and their detestation of the 
system of which he was a victim. Sumner held that 
slavery was a national evil, for which to a large ex- 
tent the nation and all its parts were responsible, 
and which to a large extent the nation might re- 
move. He was greatly aroused by the rendition of 
several slaves from Boston. To Longfellow, then in 
Europe, he appealed to send home some poems on 
slavery, — " some stirring words that shall move the 
whole land" ; Whittier, too, he urged to attack the 
evil. " The literature of the world," he wrote, " is 
turning against slavery. We shall soon have it in 
a state of moral blockade." 

Sumner always insisted that he was "a Unionist 
and a Constitutionalist" ; the aggression of the South 



IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 103 

brought him into the political arena. He denounced 
the attempt to annex Texas as "infamous," involv- 
ing a violation of the Constitution and the laws of 
nations, and the principles of good morals and fel- 
lowship. Not until the question of the admission 
of Texas as a slaveholding state arose had Sumner 
ever spoken at a political meeting or sought to ex- 
press in public his opposition to slavery ; he had 
had no relish for politics, and he had too much rev- 
erence for the Constitution to ally himself with Gar- 
risouian Abolitionists. But from the hour when in 
Faneuil Hall he stood forth to oppose the admission 
of the new slave state, he never turned back. His 
aim, as he declared to Cobden, a little later, was " to 
see slavery abolished everywhere within the sphere 
of the national government, — which is in the District 
of Columbia, on the high seas, and in the domestic 
slave trade ; and beyond this, to have this govern- 
ment for freedom, so far as it can exert an influence, 
and not for slavery." 

To the ' ' Conscience Whigs " of Massachusetts the 
admission of Texas only emphasized the need of 
more vigorous resistance for the future. At that 
time the Boston Whig press was far less sensitive 
to the evils of slavery than to suggestions from those 
identified with manufacturing interests that no 
division must be occasioned in Whig ranks. Find- 
ing editors unwilling to allow them any wide freedom 
of expression, Palfrey, Adams, Sumner, S. C. Phil- 
lips and Wilson bought a struggling newspaper, and 
in the summer of 1846 the Daily Whig was launched 



104 CHARLES SUMNER 

with Charles Francis Adams as its editor and Charles 
Sumner as a frequent contributor. 

The logical sequel of the annexation of Texas was 
the war with Mexico. In the two houses of Con- 
gress, only sixteen men had the honesty and courage 
to vote against the war appropriation bill, which 
supporters of the administration had had the ef- 
frontery to preface by the declaration, ' ' By the act 
of the Republic of Mexico a state of war exists 
between that government and the United States." 
The disgrace of the Whig party was the greater 
since it is clear that the war measure would have 
been passed without their votes, reluctantly given, 
doubtless from the fear that a failure to support the 
army at the front would react heavily a gainst them, as 
against the Federalists in 1812, and injure their pros- 
pects in the approaching election. Massachusetts 
sentiment was pronounced against the war bill, and 
all her Whig members but two voted against it. 
Both of these were from the eastern part of the stat<\ 
and the dominant one was Robert C. Winthrop. 

Winthrop was a man after Boston's own heart. 
In a community where pride of birth counted for 
much, he was the head of the family most dis- 
tinguished from the earliest colonial days. He had 
ample means, and from his studies he had gone 
directly into public life. In his twenties lie had 
been speaker of the Massachusetts House of Repre- 
sentatives, and at thirty he had been sent to Con- 
gress, where he had served with distinction and to 
the entire satisfaction of his aristocratic and con- 



IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 105 

servative constituency. He was a polished gentle- 
man and an orator of high rank. In debate he was 
said to be the peer of any member of the House. 

He offered no explanation of his vote in favor of 
the war measure, and until midsummer the Whig 
press of Boston made hardly any reference to this 
break in the Bay State delegation. In July, 
however, Adams came out in the Whig with a 
severe criticism of Winthrop's vote as a ''positive 
sanction of the acts of the administration," and 
raised the question whether he had not thereby 
"set his name in perpetual attestation of a false- 
hood." Friendly editors hurried to Winthrop's 
defense, urging that the situation was a complicated 
one, and that, in supporting the measure for the 
national defense, his vote did not necessarily imply 
approval of its preamble. It was at this stage that 
Sumner took a hand in the controversy, — not will- 
ingly, for he had had friendly personal relations 
with Winthrop and cordially approved most things 
in his public career. But at the urging of Adams 
and others he published a letter, signed "Boston," 
in which he denied the right of a representative to 
put his name to a legislative lie. In a second letter, 
he insisted that the bill, which comprised at once a 
virtual declaration of war and a false statement as 
to its origin, ought to have been opposed by the 
entire delegation ; yet he again took occasion to ex- 
press his high regard for Winthrop's character and 
public service. Sumner then wrote a note to Win- 
throp, frankly avowing himself the author of these 



106 CHARLES SUMXER 

two letters. In his reply Winthrop showed that he 
was smarting under what he deemed unjust censure, 
but expressed the hope that circumstances might 
occur which would enable them to restore their 
pleasant relations without loss of self-respect ou 
either side. Sumner responded with a personal 
letter, which explained how reluctantly he had be- 
come Winthrop's critic, but insisted that a congress- 
man's vote was public property, and that it was the 
duty of one who felt as he did upon that vote to de- 
nounce it distinctly, unequivocally, and publicly. 
He closed with the words: "I hope, my dear sir, 
that we may always meet as friends. It will not be 
easy for me to proceed into any other relation.'' 
Nevertheless, only three days later, Sumner pub- 
lished a third article on " Mr. Winthrop's Vote on 
the War Bill," more rhetorical and denunciatory 
than the two earlier ones. He asserted that Win- 
throp by that vote had u given his sanction to all 
the desolation and bloodshed of the war. . . . 
Surely this is no common act. It cannot be forgotten 
on earth ; it must be remembered in heaven. Blood ! 
blood ! is on the hands of the representative from 
Boston. Not all great Neptune's ocean can wash 
them clean ! " l To Winthrop this letter seemed ' ' full 
of insinuations as to his motives and imputations on 

^n an open letter to Winthrop, two months later, Sumner 
reiterated and heightened those charges: " Through you, they 
f the people of Boston] are made to declare uujust and cowardly 
war, with superadded falsehood, in the cause of slavery." This 
guilt " incarnadines the halls of Congress; nay, more, through 
you it reddens the hands of your constituents in Boston." 



IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 107 

his integrity," and be declined further social rela- 
tions with a man who had thus arraigned him, 
adding, ' ' My hand is not at the service of any man 
who has denounced it with such ferocity, as being 
stained with blood." 

This incident has been narrated with some fulness 
for two reasons. In the first place, it affords an 
excellent illustration of certain peculiarities of 
Sumner's mind and habit. He rarely spoke ex- 
temporaneously or wrote hastily. Whatever he 
said or published had been carefully elaborated in 
the quiet of his study. He was not a rhetorician in 
the sense that he sought to make the worse appear 
the better reason, but when once he became con- 
vinced that a man or an act ought to be denounced, 
he gave himself up to the task with an abandon like 
that of the writer of the imprecatory Psalms. His 
sense of proportion gave way under the orator's im- 
pulse and he would repeat and heighten his charges 
with a nagging persistence often more exasperating 
than the substance of the arraignment. He also 
remained strangely obtuse to the pain which his 
words were causing. Looked at from a distance of 
threescore years, the historian does not hesitate to 
pronounce Winthrop's vote a serious mistake ; 
though, in view of all the facts, he cannot doubt 
that in the perplexity of the case, the vote was 
honestly and conscientiously given. Yet in public 
print, Sumner, in a fierce crescendo of denunciation, 
could accuse Winthrop of sanctioning " unquestion- 
ably the most wicked act in our history," — and at the 



108 CHAELES SUMNER 

same time he could expect to continue with him upon 
terms of personal friendship. 

The other point of most importance in connection 
with this controversy is its social and political 
effects upon Sumner. His attacks upon AVinthrop 
created a deep and lasting bitterness toward him 
on the part of Winthrop's friends. He was the 
idol of Boston's best society. From this time, 
houses where Sumner had been a frequent and wel- 
come visitor were closed to him. 1 When a guest at a 
party given by Mr. Ticknor asked if Mr. Sumner 
were to be present, that social autocrat replied : 
"He is outside the pale of society." This ostra- 
cism was imposed upon others who refused to banish 
slavery to the background of politics. Even Adams, 
despite his family history, was not exempt, while 
Palfrey and Dana and many another met with slights 
and rebuffs from those who had hitherto seemed 
warm friends. This ostracism brought to Sumner 
a keener hurt than to other anti-slavery leaders, for 
he had no hearth of his own, and the hospitalities 
of these beautiful Boston homes had been a solace 
and a delight. "It is the opposition to Winthrop 
that aroused personal feelings against me," he wrote 
to his brother. " It has cost me friendships which 
I valued much." But he had no thought of barter- 
ing his manhood to retain them. 

'Sumner once told Phillips : "' Never after that act [his espous- 
ing the anti-slavery cause] <li<l I receive a single invitation ex- 
cept from Longfellow at Cambridge and Present t in Boston." 
Of course this ostracism came to an end hefore his last years. 
— Phillips, as reported in Boston Daily Advertiser, March 13, 1877. 



IN THE ANTI-SLAVEKY BANKS 109 

In the fall of 1846 Sumner attended his first 
caucus and began to take an active hand in party 
politics. In the Whig convention the managers 
had planned to have Winthrop make a speech 
" giving the key-note" ; but urgent calls arose for 
Sumner, and he took the platform and made an 
earnest plea that the party then and there, in 
Faneuil Hall, "vow perpetual allegiance to the 
right and perpetual hostility to slavery." 1 He 
pledged his adherence to constitutional methods, 
but affirmed that the Constitution might and should 
be amended so as to make possible more aggressive 
action against slavery. Winthrop' s speech em- 
phasized other issues, particularly the tariff, and 
its obvious intent was to arrest any tendency to- 
ward committing the party to a definite anti-slavery 
policy. Then followed the consideration of resolu- 
tions proposed by the "Commercial Whigs" and 
of another series clearly voicing the sentiments of 
the "Conscience Whigs." Excitement grew in- 
tense. It seemed likely that the anti-slavery resolu- 
tions would be adopted, when, after hurried consulta- 
tion with other leaders, Lawrence went out and 
returned escorting Daniel Webster. The effect was 
electric. Delegates parted to right and left, opening 
a path, as that majestic presence advanced to the 

1 " Sumner besought Webster to heed the changing aspects of 
the time, and add to his great title, Defender of the Constitution, 
the greater name, Defender of Humanity. Alas ! it was de- 
manding dawn of the sunset ! It was beseeching yesterday to 
return to-morrow ! It was imploring Webster to be Charles 
Sumner ! "— G. W. Curtis, Orations, Vol. Ill, p. 228. 



110 CHARLES SUMNER 

front of the hall. Not a word did he say ; yet 
his coining instantly started crystallization among 
the turbulent elements. In spite of earnest plead- 
ing from Charles Allen, the Young Whigs 1 amend- 
ment was doomed. No sooner were the slated 
resolutions passed than Webster addressed the con- 
vention, closing with the impressive words : u For 
my part, in the dark and troubled night that is 
upon us, I see no star above the horizon promising 
light to guide us but the intelligent, patriotic, united 
Whig party of the United States." 

In a review of the proceedings of the convention, 
Sumner charged that it had been dominated by 
those who regarded the tariff as a higher principle 
of union than love of freedom. One editor after an- 
other declined to print this, either because it would 
alienate proprietors and advertisers, or on the 
ground that it would widen dissensions within the 
party ; but Adams brought it out in the Whiff. 
Sumner's next activity was in connection with a 
Faneuil Hall meeting to voice indignation at the 
recent abduction of a fugitive slave, which had 
been carried out in contempt of the laws of the 
commonwealth. At the solicitation of Sumner and 
Howe, John Quincy Adams consented to preside 
over the meeting. It was the last time he was to 
appear before a public assemblage in Massachusetts. 
But neither the presence of the commonwealth's 
first citizen nor the addresses of Sumner, Phillips, 
Parker and other eloquent speakers could give 
respectability to such a gathering in the view of 



IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 111 

Boston's leading merchants and manufacturers. 
They were conspicuous by their absence. The 
meeting received scant notice in the newspapers, 
and most of them referred to it in terms of censure. 
At the time when the Whig began its outspoken 
criticism of Winthrop for his vote upon the Mex- 
ican War measure, there was no thought of or- 
ganizing opposition to his return to Congress ; but 
as the election drew near, the anti-slavery leaders 
became convinced that it would be wise, since the 
issue had been made so sharp, to place another can- 
didate in the field, not with any expectation of 
electing him, but in order to furnish a rallying point 
for moral sentiment, Sumner was the logical selec- 
tion. It was he who had forced the issue to the 
front. At the time of the meeting to put a candi- 
date in nomination, Sumner was in Maine. The 
mention of his name was greeted with tremendous 
applause, and his service seemed so essential to the 
strengthening of the movement that in spite of his 
repeated refusal to allow consideration of his name, 
he was forthwith nominated. But Sumner felt a re- 
pugnance not only to office-holding in general, but 
to this office in particular, lest his criticism of Win- 
throp' s course should be suspected to have sprung 
from an ambition to succeed him. Although many 
of his friends thought him oversensitive to any 
charge of place-seeking, he could not be swerved 
from his purpose, and positively declined to stand 
for election. Dr. Howe's name was substituted. 
In the meeting in his support Sumner made most ef- 



112 CHAKLES 8UMNEE 

fective use of au historical parallel : he recalled how 
Chatham, Burke aud Fox had beeu unceasing iu 
their denunciation of what they deemed an unjust 
war, and insisted that in America at that moment 
the higher patriotism demanded the instant with- 
drawal of our troops from Mexico. The result of 
the campaign was at no time in doubt. Winthrop 
was elected, Howe's supporters having made but 
small inroads upon the normal Whig vote in sup- 
port of a regular nominee of such eminence. But 
Massachusetts' attitude was, in a way, authorita- 
tively reversed a few weeks later when the legisla- 
ture, by a vote of nearly two to one, adopted a 
series of resolutions (which Sumner had drafted for a 
legislative committee) in connection with a report 
upon the Mexican War. These denounced the war 
in unmeasured terms, and called for the withdrawal 
of American troops from Mexico, a doctrine which 
Adams declared Sumner had been the first man in 
the United States to proclaim and to argue at 
length. 

In the fall of 1847 Sumner was placed at the head 
of the one hundred and more Boston delegates to the 
Whig state convention. Here again the contest was 
renewed between the two wings of the party, espe- 
cially over Palfrey's resolution, binding Massachu- 
setts Whigs to "support no men for the offices of 
President and Vice-President of the United States 
but such as are known by their acts or declared 
opinions to be opposed to the extension of slavery." 
Palfrey, Sumner, Adams and Allen spoke earnestly 



IN THE ANTI-SLAVERY RANKS 113 

in favor of thus making resistance to slavery the 
paramount issue iu the selection of candidates, a 
sentiment which was greeted by hisses especially 
from the ranks of the Boston delegates. Winthrop 
led the opposition to the passage of this resolution 
and succeeded in defeating it, thus for the second 
time blocking the purposes of the anti-slavery men 
in state convention. In the ensuing session of 
Congress Winthrop was a candidate for the speaker- 
ship, and Southerners were the more attracted to 
him from the fact that he had made himself obnox- 
ious to anti-slavery men in his own state. Before the 
ballotiug began, Palfrey sent to Winthrop certain 
inquiries as to the policy which he intended, if 
elected, to promote by his committee appointments, 
particularly in regard to the continuance of the 
Mexican War and other matters relating to slavery. 
Winthrop refused to make any advance statement, 
and in consequence both Giddings and Palfrey — al- 
though personally urged by John Quincy Adams to 
vote for Winthrop — voted against him, an action 
which called down upon them the wrath of the con- 
servative Whigs. l Sumner immediately sent Palfrey 
a letter of warm commendation and came to his de- 
fense in two spirited newspaper articles, insisting 
that a man who deemed opposition to slavery the 
one essential issue and who was an unwavering op- 

1 It was this vote of Palfrey's that called forth the famous 
<l Remarks of Increase D. O'Phace, at an extrumpery caucus in 
State Street, as reported by Mr. H. Biglow, " beginning 
"No? Hezhe? He hain't, though? Wut? Voted agin him? 

If the bird of our country could ketch him, she'd skin him ! " 



114 CHARLES SUMNEE 

ponent of the war, could not with self-respect 
support a man who was hesitating in his attitude 
toward slavery aud whose vote had given sanction 
to the war. 



CHAPTER VII 

MASSACHUSETTS AND THE COMPROMISE : SUMNER' S 
ELECTION TO THE SENATE 

No sooner was the war with Mexico at an end 
than the question became urgent, what should be 
done with the ceded territory, and what would be 
the effect of the acquisition of such domain upon 
the balance betweeu the free and slave states ? So 
big with embarrassment and danger had this ques- 
tion loomed in advance, that not a few men had 
sought to forestall it by securing from Congress be- 
fore the eud of the war a declaration against any 
acquisition of territory from Mexico. To this 
scheme both Webster and Winthrop gave their 
earnest support. To Sumner, on the other hand, 
the project seemed futile, for he believed that the 
acquisition of such territory was a thing inevitable. 
Moreover, throughout his life, he showed himself a 
zealous expansionist whenever he believed annex- 
ation of the territory in question would make for 
both the strength of the nation and the advantage 
of the people to be annexed. 1 

The year 1848 was a time that tried men's souls. 
Perhaps the hardest testing came to the old mem- 
bers of the Whig party of the type of Webster. 
Conscious of the party's weakness with the mass of 

1 Infra, pp. 318-319 ; 363-364. 



116 CHARLES SUMXER 

the people, the Whig leaders again made anxious 
search for a vote-getter as their candidate for the 
presidency, and finally nominated Taylor, a Louisi- 
ana slave-owner who had won glory in the victories 
of a war instigated and fought to advance the 
interests of slavery. Upon the instant, this stulti- 
fying nomination opened schism in the party : 
Charles Allen and Henry Wilson, the most in- 
fluential members of the Massachusetts delegation 
in the national convention at Philadelphia, declared 
that they would do all in their power to defeat the 
nominee, and withdrew from the convention, Allen 
declaring that the Whig party was from that day 
dissolved. 1 

Indeed, its dissolution had already been foreseen, 
and in Massachusetts there had been prepared in 
Sumner's office a call for a convention of all citizens 
of the commonwealth opposed to the nomination of 
Cass and of Taylor. 2 This call was headed by 
Charles Francis Adams, and Sumner's name stood 
second on the list of signers. In response, there 
gathered in Worcester, June 28, 1848, a throng of 
5,000 earnest opponents of slavery, and beneath the 
trees of the Common— for no hall would hold the 
crowd— as Sumner himself later asserted, "was the 
beginning of the separate Free Soil organization in 

1 G. F. Hoar, Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. I, p. 140. 
Wilson, Eise and Fall of th. Slave Power in America, Vol. II, p. 

136. 

' Folding and directing the call for this convention was the 
first political work ever done by George Frisbie Hoar. — Auto- 
biography, p. 148. 



ELECTION TO THE SENATE 117 

Massachusetts, which afterward grew into the Re- 
publican party.' ' Half a century later Senator 
Hoar recalled as the most vivid impression of that 
memorable day u the manly form of Charles Sum- 
ner in the splendor and vigor and magnetic power 
of his youthful eloquence." l Strong anti-slavery 
resolutions were adopted, and six delegates were 
chosen to attend a convention which was held, six 
weeks later, at Buffalo, where Martin Van Buren 
was nominated for the presidency. Sunnier at- 
tended this first national convention of the Free 
Soilers, but not as a member, since it was thought 
good politics to choose the delegates from among 
leaders who had been closely identified with exist- 
ing parties. 

1 Over words used by Sumner in his speech at Worcester, 
charging that Taylor's nomination had been " brought about 
by an unhallowed union, conspiracy rather let it be called, 
. . . between the Lords of the lash and the Lords of the 
loom," a heated controversy arose between Nathan Appleton 
and Sumner. Copies of these interesting letters were presented 
in manuscript to the Boston Public Library in 1874. In justi- 
fying his language, Sumner tells of an interview with Abbott 
Lawrence, on the latter's invitation, in which, ten days before 
the Philadelphia convention, Lawrence told Sumner that Tay- 
lor would be nominated and that he had consented to allow his 
own name to be used for Vice-President. Sumner most ear- 
nestly protested, but Lawrence said : "What can I do about it? 
I am in up to the eyes." Mr. Appleton insisted that for months 
before the convention met he had been convinced that Taylor 
was the only Whig who could be elected ; that he could be, and 
was worthy to be ; that there was no chance of Webster's being 
either nominated or elected. Lawrence's nomination he be- 
lieved was defeated " by his fellow citizens and neighbors " and 
he added : " I consider the conduct of Allen and Wilson in that 
convention as the most disgraceful piece of political swindling 
which has ever fallen within my ken, a transaction from, 
which every honorable mind should revolt." 



118 CHAKLES SUMNER 

Into the campaign which ensued Sumner threw 
himself with great vigor. He was niade chairman 
of the committee charged with its management. 
There was urgent demand for his services in other 
states, but, with the exception of a week of cam- 
paigning in Maine, he devoted all his energies to 
his own state. He spoke in twenty-seven cities and 
towns. Everywhere he captivated his audiences, 
winning approval of his speeches even from oppo- 
nents and a hostile press, which called him the 
"Demosthenes" of his party. Though he ordi- 
narily spoke for three hours, he kept his hearers 
keyed to a high pitch of enthusiasm. Only at 
Cambridge did he encounter disturbance, till it was 
silenced by Sumner's retort: "The young man 
who hisses will regret it ere his hair turns gray. 
He can be no son of Xew England ; her soil would 
spurn him." 

What this campaign meant for Sumner's future 
was perhaps less clearly understood by him than by 
some of his friends. It made him known, through- 
out the state, no longer merely as a platform orator 
upon literary themes, but as an effective political 
leader and debater. Longfellow wrote in his diary 
on October 22, 1848: "Sumner stands now, as he 
himself feels, just at the most critical point of his 
life. Shall he plunge inevitably into politics or 
not? That is the question ; and it is already an- 
swered. He inevitably will do so, and after 
many defeats will be very distinguished as a 
leader. . . . From politics as a career he still 



ELECTION TO THE SENATE 119 

shrinks back. When he has once burned his ships, 
there will be no retreat. He already holds in his 
hands the lighted torch." 

Sumner received the unanimous nomination of 
the Free Soilers for member of Congress from the 
Boston district. There was no hope of securing his 
election, but the campaign of education was effect- 
ive, notwithstanding the fact that he polled less 
than a third the number of votes that were cast for 
Winthrop. But Sumner shared with other leaders 
of the movement the bitter resentment of the 
Whigs against the Free Soilers, painful separations 
from former friends and violent abuse from the 
Boston press. He felt these hurts keenly, but con- 
soled himself with John Quincy Adams's words to 
him, in the last year of his life, " No man is abused, 
whose influence is not felt." 

As a result of their efforts in the national election 
of 1848, the Free Soilers saw little prospect of mak- 
ing large enough accessions to their ranks to play 
an important part as an independent organization. 
To many of their leaders, including Sumner, it 
seemed wisest to adopt an opportunist policy : to 
hold fast to their anti-slavery principles, but to seek 
their practical advancement by voting with the 
party which would make the most valuable con- 
cessions. An alliance between Whigs and anti- 
slavery men in New Hampshire had already suc- 
ceeded in electing John P. Hale to the United 
States Senate. Forthwith a similar coalition began 
to be mooted in Massachusetts between the Free 



120 CHARLES SUMNER 

Soilers and the Democrats. Their combined vote 
would exceed that of the conservative Whigs by 
nearly 12,000. To this policy of coalition Sumner 
felt none of the repugnance which held back 
many of his former friends, whose connection with 
the Whig party had been more intimate than his. 
Party to Sumner, all his life long, was merely a 
means to an end. In their state convention in 
1819 the Democrats adopted resolutions opposing 
the extension of slavery in the territories. Sumner 
therefore favored alliance with them in the election 
of anti-slavery candidates. With little effort they 
succeeded in electing thirteen members of the Sen- 
ate and one hundred and thirty of the House, — a 
long step toward the more effective coalition of the 
following year. 

In the country at large there were beginning to 
appear results of the Mexican War vastly different 
from those sought by the men who forced it upon 
the country. The convention that framed the con- 
stitution on which was based California's applica- 
tion for admission to the Union, by unanimous vote 
inserted in it a section prohibiting slavery, and the 
people of New Mexico forthwith petitioned Con- 
gress that slavery be prohibited in the law for their 
territorial government. The thought of such con- 
cessions was intolerable to Southern leaders in Con- 
gress, and in 1819 and 18r>0 they did not hesitate to 
threaten secession if Congress should prohibit slavery 
in the territories or admit California as a free stale. 
The issue had become full of menace, when ( lay in- 



ELECTION TO THE SENATE 121 

troduced his scheme of pacification; its provisions 
were under debate for many months before they 
finally secured enactment as separate laws, which 
have become known collectively as the Compromise 
of 1850. Its fate still hung in the balance, when 
Webster came to its support. It is needless here to 
review the arguments of that epoch-making speech. 
There is no question that it exercised a most potent 
influence in securing the adoption of the compromise 
measures. But the fact that here needs emphasis is 
that Webster's Seventh of March speech produced 
a revolution in Massachusetts politics by virtue of 
which within a few months Webster's place in the 
Senate was taken not by his logical successor, Win- 
throp, but by the radical, Sumner. 

Historians may continue to debate whether ambi- 
tion or enlightened patriotism dictated that speech. 
Our present concern is with its effect upon Massa- 
chusetts. The Webster who had repeatedly op- 
posed the extension of slavery and who had taken 
the lead in insisting that the Wilmot Proviso must 
be applied to the territory ceded by Mexico, now 
opposed such restrictions. That Webster should 
find himself out of sympathy with some Abolition- 
ists was not strange ; but in this speech he showed 
no discrimination between radicals who denounced 
the Constitution as a league with Hell, and men of 
an utterly different stamp, who urged that the 
national government's acts should extend rather 
than curtail the domain of freedom :— all these he 
grouped together and heaped upon them coarse 



122 CHARLES SUMNER 

abuse and derisive epithets. Most disheartening 
of all was the support which he gave to the barbarous 
Fugitive Slave Bill. The feeling produced in the 
hearts of thousands throughout the commonweal th 
found fitting expression in "Ichabod," which 
Whittier declared was written u in one of the 
saddest moments of my life," as "the outcome of 
the surprise and grief and forecast of evil con- 
sequences " caused by the reading of this speech: 

"So fallen ! so lost ! the light withdrawn 
Which once he wore ! 
The glory from his gray hairs gone 
Forevermore ! " 

Nevertheless, as the summer months came and 
the compromise measures still hung in suspense, 
Webster's arguments and influence began to tell 
strongly with the timorous and with the traders. 
Dana later declared : "The truth is, Daniel Web- 
ster was strong enough to subjugate for a time the 
moral sentiment of New England. ' ' ! Massachusetts 
manufacturers and Boston merchants were per- 
suaded that there was no chance of securing pro- 
tective modifications of the tariff unless at the price 
of concessions to the South. In less than a month 
from the time when Webster broke his silence, his 
course as to the Compromise was approved in a 
public letter, signed by hundreds of Boston's most 
representative men, including not a few in Sumner's 

'From his diary, June 25, 1854. Adams's Biography of 
Dana, Vol. I, p. 286. 



ELECTION TO THE SENATE 123 

circle of intimates — even Prescott and Felton ; and 
the news of the final passage of the Compromise was 
hailed by the firing of a hundred guns on Boston 
Common. Meantime, in July, Webster had be- 
come Fillmore's Secretary of State and Winthrop 
had been appointed to the seat temporarily vacant 
in the Senate. To fill the vacancy thus caused in 
the House, Sumner was nominated by the Free 
Soilers, but was defeated by a vote of five to one, 
by S. A. Eliot, whom the Whigs nominated 
avowedly because of his earnest support of the 
Compromise, and whom Webster greeted in a pri- 
vate letter, upon his arrival in Washington, as 
"the personification of Boston, — ever intelligent, 
ever patriotic, ever glorious Boston." 1 Eliot, who 
had voted for the anti-slavery resolutions recently 
passed by the Massachusetts legislature, now voted 
in favor of the Fugitive Slave Bill. He declined re- 
election at the end of his brief term, and was suc- 
ceeded by another of Boston's leading citizens of 
similar views. 

The enforcement of the new Fugitive Slave Law 
soon aroused intense opposition throughout the 
North. Nevertheless reclamations were made in 
various cities, even of persons who under the older 
law had been safe from seizure. The expression of 
anti-slavery sentiment in Boston and especially the 
holding of a meeting in Faneuil Hall to denounce 
the new law seemed to arouse its upholders to a de- 

1 Eliot was the man whom Sumner had most strongly an- 
tagonized in the Prison Discipline controversy. Supra, p. 98. 



124 CHARLES SUMNER 

termination that in Boston it should be most rigor, 
ously enforced. A few fugitives were spirited 
away, but this only stirred the national administra- 
tion to renewed energy. Webster, himself, from his 
office of Secretary of State, " took a personal interest 
in having the law executed in Boston, and assumed 
the direction of the prosecutions, although it properly 
belonged to the Attorney-General." 1 

Sumner was one of the defense of Sims, a negro 
living in Boston, who was claimed by a Georgia 
slaveholder. Sumner laid emphasis upon the un- 
judicial powers delegated by the new law to a com- 
missioner — not a judge — in that without trial by 
jury he could give a certificate of reudition, although 
the negro was not allowed to speak in his own 
defense and no adequate means were provided of 
testing the truthfulness of the claimant's testimony. 
But all efforts in Sims' s behalf proved unavailing. 

Boston adherents of compromise presently found 
divers means of disciplining those who were not 
yielding it a supine compliance. Ostracism such as 
Sumner had earlier experienced was now extended 
to others, and the leading Boston papers opened 
their columns to communications urging that Sum- 
ner and Howe, Dana and Parker and others named 
be boycotted (in modern phrase) not only in social 
but also in business relations, that the cutting off of 
their livelihood might reduce them to silence. 

Even before the Compromise measures were finally 
adopted by Congress, the Free Soilers in the Massa- 

1 Adams, Biography of Dana, Vol. I, p. 228. 



ELECTION TO THE SENATE 125 

chusetts legislature had been outspoken in their de- 
nunciatiou, and demanded the passage of resolu- 
tions which should put the state in opposition 
to the attitude that Webster had assumed. In all 
this movement the lead was taken by Henry Wilson, 
the "Natick Cobbler," who has probably never 
been excelled in Massachusetts in his power of 
getting close to the great masses of the people and 
of understanding their thought and will. To the 
Whigs, who defeated these resolutions, he boldly 
declared: "I will go out from this hall, and will 
unite with any party or body of men to drive you 
from power, rebuke Daniel Webster, and place in 
his seat a senator true to the principles and senti- 
ments of the commonwealth.' ' At his call, as chair- 
man of the Free Soil state committee, there assembled 
early in September fifty or more of the leading Free 
Soilers. He bluntly stated the object of the meeting 
to be to " consider the policy of cooperation with 
the Democrats at the next election," particularly 
with reference to securing the election of a United 
States senator. This proposed coalition was earnestly 
opposed by the more prominent of the Free Soil 
leaders, such as Palfrey, Adams, Dana and Samuel 
Hoar. They were Whigs of many years' standing, 
and could not overcome a repugnance to alliance 
with the Democrats, — a repugnance which Sumner 
did not share. In this matter he proved himself a 
better prophet and a shrewder politician than men 
more versed in party warfare. In the middle of 
October he wrote to Charles Allen: " Nothing is 



126 CHARLES SUMNER 

clearer to me than this. Our friends should, if pos- 
sible, secure the balance of power in the legislature, 
so as to influence the choice of senator. Some are 
sanguine that we can elect one of our men. I doubt 
this, but by a prudent course and without any bar- 
gain, we can obtain control of the [state] Senate. 
We can then at least dictate to the Whigs whom 
they shall send." ! To Horace Mann, at that time a 
candidate for reelection to Congress, he wrote a 
fortnight later, urging him to take the field at once. 
" In what you say, be careful not to disturb Demo- 
crats. They are desirous of an excuse for support- 
ing you." 2 

Massachusetts Democrats, upon their side, were 
favorably disposed to coalition, not only because of 
their opposition to the Compromise but because the 
existing system of representation in the state did 
them great injustice. The constitution required that 
the election of state officers should be by a majority 
vote ; otherwise, the election was thrown into the 
legislature. Moreover, each town elected its repre- 
sentatives on a general ticket, with the result that to 
every legislature Boston sent forty-four Whigs ; 
whereas if the city had been districted, the minority 
party would have received a very considerable repre- 
sentation. Further, this solid block of Whigs was 
elected every year from Boston, whereas towns below 
a certain population were allowed to send a repre- 
sentative only a proportional number of years in a 
decade. In the year 1850, however, — the year pre- 

1 Pierce, Vol. Ill, p. 218. -Ibid., p. 219. 



ELECTION TO THE SENATE 127 

ceding a decennial state valuation, — each town was 
allowed to send at least one member ; the result was 
that in the large legislature of that year there were 
many more Democrats than usual, smarting under 
the inj ustices done their party. 

The campaign was sharply contested. The state was 
thoroughly covered by the ablest Free Soil speakers, 
helped not a little by the eloquence, spirited if 
crude, of a number of young men fresh from college, 
whose first inspirations in politics may well have 
come from Sumner's Lyceum lectures. The excite- 
ment was made the more tense by the fact that a 
fugitive slave case was pending in Boston in the 
closing days of the campaign. In most of the 
counties and towns the Democrats and Free Soilers 
united in support of the same candidates for the 
legislature, and their alliance returned Mann to 
Congress. 

In Faneuil Hall, Sumner brought the campaign 
to a climax in one of the most effective speeches of 
his life. l After brief discussion of the local issues 
of the hour, he launched into a scathing denuncia- 
tion of the new Fugitive Slave Law. He pointed 
out its barbarous invasion of human rights, declar- 
ing that the soul sickened at the contemplation of 
this legalized outrage. He challenged the mention 
of any act of shame in the dreary annals of the past 
that could u compare in atrocity with this enact- 
ment of an American Congress.' ' Of the President 

lu Our Immediate Anti-Slavery Duties," November 6, 1850. 
Works, Vol. II, pp. 398-424. 



128 CHARLES SUMNER 

who signed it, he said : " Other Presidents may be 
forgotten ; but the name signed to the Fugitive 
Slave Bill can never be forgotten. There are 
depths of infamy as there are heights of fame. 
. . . Better for him had he never been born." 
Referring to the fact that he himself was a commis- 
sioner of a United States court, " before whom the 
l^anting fugitive may be dragged for the decision of 
the question whether he is a freeman or a slave, ' } 
Sumner said, " I cannot forget that I am a man, 
although I am a commissioner," — a sentence which 
his opponents in Massachusetts at the time and later 
in Washington caught up as proving him to be 
reckless and inflammatory in word and in deed. He 
invoked not violence, but "the contempt, the indig- 
nation, the abhorrence of the community" as the 
weapons which should drive the slave-hunter out of 
Massachusetts. To the oft-urged claim that the 
Compromise had settled the slavery question, came 
his ringing retort, "Nothing, sir, can be settled 
which is not right ! " 

That speech made Sumner the inevitable choice 
for the Senate. Its deliberate intent, as he later de- 
clared, was to "create a public sentiment which 
would render the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave 
Law impossible." His audience and the state were 
fired by his eloquence and by his courage. The 
foes of compromise instantly saw that the placing of 
such a force in the Senate would be the greatest gain 
they could possibly secure for their cause. In the 
election the coalition obtained unhoped for success. 



ELECTION TO THE SENATE 129 

They blocked the election of a governor, and chose 
a majority of ten of the senators and of fifty-four in 
the House. Other names were suggested as possi- 
bilities for the Senate, but as the time for the as- 
sembling of the legislature approached, Sumner's 
name was everywhere conceded to be the one that 
would be fixed upon, not only because of his bold 
and effective leadership, as in the Faneuil Hall 
speech, but also on the ground of political expe- 
diency, since Sumner had not antagonized Demo- 
crats by leadership in the Whig party. 

Charles Francis Adams wrote to him from Wash- 
ington, saying, " The only full consideration that 
we can receive [for the coalition] is in securing 
your services in the Senate." To this Sumner re- 
sponded ingenuously, acknowledging that such 
an election would be a grateful vindication of 
himself against the attacks to which he had been 
exposed, and that it would open up an attractive 
sphere of usefulness. " But," he added, " notwith- 
standing these things, I must say that I have not 
been able at any time in my inmost heart to bring 
myself to desire the post or even to be willing to 
take it. My dreams and visions are all in other di- 
rections. In the course of my life I have had many ; 
but none have been in the United States Senate. In 
taking that post, I must renounce quiet and repose 
forever ; my life henceforward would be in pub- 
lic affairs. I cannot contemplate this without re- 
pugnance. It would call upon me to forego those 
literary plans and aspirations which I have more 



130 CHARLES SUMXEK 

at heart than any merely political success/' ! No 
charge is more groundless than that Charles Sumner 
sought this office. 

Promptly upon assembling, the two houses of the 
legislature organized by the election of Henry Wil- 
son, President of the Senate, and Nathaniel P. 
Banks, Speaker of the House, positions which, by a 
strange coincidence, they were both soon to occupy 
in the national legislature. Conference committees 
of the Free Soilers and Democrats came together 
to determine the programme of elections. The one 
thing upon which the Free Soilers insisted was that a 
Free Soiler, chosen by them, should be elected to 
the United States Senate for the full term ; in con- 
sideration of this they were willing to turn over to 
the Democrats all the state offices as well as the sen- 
ator to be chosen for the few weeks of Winthrop's 
unexpired term. In their caucus, January 7th, the 
Free Soilers gave a practically unanimous nomina- 
tion to Charles Sumner ; but when his name was 
presented to the Democratic caucus, some members 
demurred, preferring a less radical anti-slavery 
leader. The matter was referred to the decision of 
a two-thirds vote, and Sumner received fifty-eight 
votes to twenty-seven for all others, so that his nom- 
ination was formally approved, with but five Demo- 
cratic votes against him. George S. Boutwell, 
Democrat, was forthwith elected governor, and the 
other stale offices were tilled in accordance with the 
programme. But presently it transpired that Caleb 

1 December 15, 1850. Pierce, Vol. Ill, p. 233. 



ELECTION TO THE SENATE 131 

Cushing, although he had voted in favor of abiding 
by the two-thirds' decision, was organizing opposi- 
tion to Sumner's election among the Democrats and 
that some Free Soilers— even Palfrey, in an open 
letter to members of the legislature,— were question- 
ing the desirability of electing a pronounced Eree 
Soiler to the Senate. 

In order to elect a senator, the law then required 
the concurrent vote of the two houses. On the day 
appointed for the election in the House, the corridors 
and galleries were thronged. Intense excitement 
prevailed. The ballot resulted in one hundred and 
eighty -six votes for Sumner (one hundred and ten 
Free Soil, and seventy-six Democrat) to one hun- 
dred and sixty-seven for Winthrop, with twenty- 
eight scattering votes. Sumner had failed of an 
election by five votes. The outcome provoked 
much anxious and angry discussion, the Free Soilers 
resenting the Democrats' defection. This proved 
the beginning of the longest deadlock that Massa- 
chusetts has ever known. For three months and 
over, the election hung fire, Sumner's vote on dif- 
ferent ballots in the House falling anywhere from 
two to twelve short of the number necessary to elect. 
Meantime, early in the session, he had been elected 
on the part of the Senate, and a Democrat had been 
duly elected by both houses for the vacancy which 
Winthrop was filling till his successor should be 
chosen. 

The delay encouraged the opposition, and they 
set upon the Free Soilers and upon Sumner in par- 



132 CHAELES SUMNER 

ticular with every sort of abuse. The coalition was 
assailed in the press as " scandalous," involving a 
u base juggle," " self-abasement " and " profligacy" ; 
it was even declared an " indictable offense," "crim- 
inal not only in morals but in the law of the land." 
Every similar alliance which Whigs had made in 
earlier contests was banished from memory. By 
faint-hearted adherents Sumner was urged to modify 
the expressions of his Faneuil Hall speech. This he 
promptly refused to do. He was waited upon by 
deputations of anxious Democrats, who begged for 
some assurance that, if elected, he would not agitate 
the slavery question in the Senate. His unvarying 
answer was that he had not sought the office, but 
that, if it came to him, he should enter upon it ab- 
solutely untrammeled. To John Bigelow he wrote : 
"It is very evident that a slight word of promise or 
yielding to the Hunkers would have secured my 
election ; but this is impossible. The charge used 
with most effect agaiust me is that lama' disun- 
iouist ' ; but the authors of this know its falsehood, 
— it is all a sham to influence votes. My principles 
are, in the words of Franklin, c to step to the verge 
of the Constitution to discourage every species of 
traffic in human flesh.' I am a constitutionalist and 
a unionist, and have always been." ! 

While refusing to make any concession or pledge, 
Sumner again and again told individuals that he 
was willing to stand aside for any other candidate 
who would be true to freedom and better unite the 

January 21, 1851. Pierce, Vol. Ill, p. 239. 



ELECTION TO THE SENATE 133 

members of the legislature ; and in a letter to Wil- 
son, to be communicated to the Free Soil members, 
he bade them abandon him whenever they thought 
best, without notice or apology. But his adherents 
stood firm, believing that Sumner better than any 
other leader could serve the cause of freedom in the 
Senate. After many earlier discussions, the Free 
Soilers in caucus, March 17th, formally deter- 
mined not to present any other candidate. In 
their official organ his Faneuil Hall speech was 
reprinted in full, as still acceptable to the men of 
the party. Yet the advice of the governor, who al- 
ready held his office as a result of votes given in an- 
ticipation of Sumner's election, was for the substi- 
tution of a less radical man. 

The long delay in the fulfilling of pledges was 
felt by many members of the House to be undermin- 
ing their hold upon their constituents. Indeed, it 
was by pressure from outside that the end of the 
conflict was finally forced. Eesort was had to a 
provision of the Massachusetts Bill of Eights, for 
years unused, by virtue of which at special town- 
meetings, legally called for that purpose, the voters 
in several towns met and by formal vote " in- 
structed" their representatives to support Sumner. 
To such a mandate they yielded prompt obedience. 

For three weeks early in April no vote was taken, 
for the law did not then, as now, require daily bal- 
lots. Upon the renewal of the voting Sumner lacked 
but a single vote. Ostensibly to prevent difficulty 
from ballots sticking together, a Boston Whig moved 



134 CHAKLES SUMNER 

that the ballots be enclosed in uniform envelopes. 
It was suspected that the real object of the motion 
was to enable some Democrat with less observance 
to vote against Sumner. If so, the device failed of it s 
intention, for upon the very next ballot he received 
193 votes, the precise number necessary to elect. 

At the time the vote was declared, Sumner was 
dining at the house of Charles Francis Adams, and 
the news was brought to him while at table. 
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., then a lad in his teens, 
was the first to congratulate him. He recalled in 
later years that Sumner received the news "with 
perfect placidity" and "with an utter absence of 
any apparent elation or excessive interest. . . . 
He certainly was far less elated than was my father 
or any of my father's children." In a few minutes 
Mr. Adams's library was thronged with men who 
had come over from the State House to offer their 
congratulations. Sumner soon left this scene of ex- 
citement, and went to Cambridge, where he spent 
the next two or three nights at the home of Long- 
fellow, who also noted his lack of elation : "The 
papers are all ringing with l Sumner,' ' Sumner,' and 
the guns are thundering out their triumph ; mean- 
while the hero of the strife is sitting quietly here, 
more saddened than exalted." ' This was no pose. 
To his brother George, with whom he corresponded 
with the utmost frankness, he wrote : 

"Now that the victory is won, my former dislike 
and indifference to it [the Senate] have lost none of 

1 Longfellow's Diary, April 25th. 



ELECTION TO THE SENATE 135 

their strength. From the bottom of my heart I say 
that I do not wish to be senator. The honors of 
the post have no attraction for me ; and I feel a pang 
at the thought that I now bid farewell to that life 
of quiet study, with the employment of my pen, 
which I had hoped to pursue. At this moment, 
could another person, faithful to our cause, be chosen 
in my place, I would resign. I am humbled by the 
importance attached to the election. Throughout 
Massachusetts, and even in other states, there have 
been bonfires, firings of cannon, ringing of bells, 
public meetings, and all forms of joy, to celebrate 
the event. As I read of these, I felt my inability 
to meet the expectations aroused. Again, I wish I 
was not in the place. I am met constantly by joy- 
ful faces, but I have no joy ; my heart is heavy. 
Never did I need sympathy and friendly succor 
more than now, when most of the world regards me 
as a most fortunate man, with a prospect of peculiar 
brilliancy." ! 

To many conservative Whigs, followers of Web- 
ster, Sumner's election was as the gall of bitterness. 
By them his views were held to be little less danger- 
ous than those of anarchists to-day, and his political 
associates were thought " plebeian" and " revolu- 
tionary." 2 But to Free Soilers throughout the state 

1 April 29, 1851. Pierce. Vol. Ill, p. 247. 

2 Editorial comment in Boston papers on Sumner's election ran 
as follows: " It is the greatest outrage upon the feelings of the 
majority of the people of the state, by a combination between 
two minorities, which we have ever known to be perpetrated in 
any states of the Union. We regard the event as a most unfor- 
tunate one for the reputation of the state." — Daily A dvertiser. 
11 We need hardly say that the election of Mr. Sumner will be 
regretted by all who wish the state of Massachusetts to stand 
where she has stood, nobly and firmly fixed in her loyalty to the 



136 CHAKLES SUMNER 

and nation Sumner's election was a cause of heart- 
felt rejoicings. Xot a few men present when the 
decisive vote was announced recalled that as the 
happiest moment of their lives. It was accepted 
not merely as a victory won, but as an earnest of 
greater triumphs to follow. Of the many who had 
helped to bring this about, none had been so tireless 
or so effective in his activity as Henry Wilson, who 
was destined to be Sumner's colleague iu the Senate 
before the end of his first term. This service Sumner 
clearly and gratefully recognized : " To your ability 
energy, determination, and fidelity our cause owes 
its i) resent success. For weal or woe, you must take 
the responsibility of having placed me in the Senate 
of the United States." 1 Earnest and cordial letters 
came to Sumner from friends both at home and 
abroad. 2 Theodore Parker's greeting was also a 

American Union. ' ' — Courier. ' ' The mountain that has been la- 
boring for three months has brought forth ; and Charles Sumner, 
Esq., has been elected for six years to succeed Mr. Webster in 
the Senate of the United States. This will be a sore disappoint- 
ment to the Whig party." — Transcript. For further examples 
of newspaper comment, see Charles Sumner : Memoir and Eulo- 
gies, by W. M. Cornell, p. 30. But the Boston Commonwealth 
of May 16, 1851, contained a long and very favorable comment. 

1 April 25, 1851. Pierce, Vol. III. p. 249. 

2 From Salmon P. Chase came a warm letter of congratulation, 
beginning, 4k Laus Deo ! From the bottom of my heart I con- 
gratulate you — no, not you but all friends of freedom every- 
where upon your election to the Senate. Now, I feel as if I had 
a brother — colleague — one with whom I shall sympathize and 
be able fully to act." He speaks of Hale as " too much an off- 
hand man himself to be patient of consultation " ; of Seward as 
" meaning to maintain his own position as an anti-slavery man 
in the Whig party and only in the Whig party" ; and thus of 
Wade : " He will generally go with Seward." "None of these 



ELECTION TO THE SENATE 137 

prophecy: "You told me once that you were in 
morals, not in politics. Now I hope you will show 
that you are still in morals, although in politics. I 
hope you will be the senator with a conscience.' ' 

are to me as you are. I feel that you have larger, broader views, 
aud that you are willing to labor more systematically for the ac- 
complishment of greater purposes. " In this and in later letters 
he urges that he and Sumner take lodgings in the same house 
at Washington. — Letter of April 28, 1851. Diary and Corre- 
spondence of S. P. Chase, Report of American Historical As- 
sociation, 1902, Vol. II, p. 235. Among the papers here re- 
printed are thirty-six letters from Chase to Sumner, covering 
the period from 1847 to 1860. In some of the later ones there 
is frank discussion of the programme of the Republican party 
and of Chase's possible candidacy for the presidency. 

Seward's greeting was hardly less cordial. He wrote : "I 
take new courage in the cause of truth and justice when I see 
a senator coming from Massachusetts imbued with the uncom- 
promising devotion to freedom and humanity of John Quincy 
Adams." 



CHAPTER VIII 

SENATE BEGINNINGS: " FREEDOM NATIONAL, 
SLAVERY SECTIONAL ' ' 

The approach of the time for the opening of 
Congress found Sumner deeply saddened. On the 
day of his departure for Washington, he wept like a 
child at taking leave of his mother and his dearest 
friends, Howe and Longfellow. To Howe he wrote, 
a few hours later, "I stand now on the edge of 
a great change. ... I cannot see the future ; 
but I know that I now move away from those who 
have been more than brothers to me. My soul 
is wrung, and my eyes are bleared with tears. God 
bless you ever and ever, my noble, well-tried and 
truly dear friend." Throughout his life Sumner 
was a man of deep sentiment, much given to analyz- 
ing and appraising his own emotions and to giving 
them elaborate expression both in letters and in 
conversation. 

On the first day of the session Sumner's credentials 
were presented by General Lewis Cass, at Sumner's 
request, as " his oldest personal friend in the body." ! 

1 " It must have been ludicrous to seetheold time-server, Cass, 
act as the senatorial godfather of the handsome young philan- 
thropist, Charles Sumner. January and May are more alike." 

. . "The Whig who, when asked, in 1848, whether he would 
choose Cass or Taylor, replied in a pnblio speech, ' If two evils 
are presented to me, I will take neither,' was not likely to 
show much respect for the card-houses of the politicians." 
—Frederic Bancroft, Life of William H. Seward, Vol. I, p. 298. 



SENATE BEGINNINGS 139 

His own colleague, John Davis, upon whom this 
service would naturally have devolved, although in 
Washington, was absent from the Senate at this 
time, whether from unwillingness to stand sponsor 
for Sumner is not known. In later years it was 
recalled as a matter of dramatic significance that 
Henry Clay, " compromise incarnate " tottered from 
the Senate chamber for the last time the very day 
that Charles Sumner, " conscience incarnate," 
entered its doors. 

The Senate was undergoing a great transformation. 
Calhoun had died during the previous sessioo. 
Webster had become Secretary of State, and was 
never again to be heard in that body. Benton, who 
had himself just been defeated for reelection because 
of his opposition to the Compromise, greeted Sum- 
ner warmly, but " assured him that he had come to 
the Senate too late. All the great issues and all the 
great men were gone. There was nothing left but 
snarling over slavery, and no chance whatever for a 
career." l A few months later, Sumner's colleague, 
"Honest" John Davis, declared as his final verdict 
upon public life: "At Washington slavery rules 
everything." By the great majority of senators the 
Compromise was accepted as a finality, but there 
were a few heralds of a new day : John P. Hale had 
been sent to the Senate by a combination of New 
Hampshire anti-slavery Whigs and Democrats, and 
Salmon P. Chase, who became Sumner's closest 
political associate, had been elected by a coalition 

l J. M. Rogers, Life of Benton, p. 279. 



140 CHAKLES SUMNER 

of Free Soilers and Democrats in Ohio. Aside 
from these two, he was to find most sympathy in 
Seward and Wade, though neither was as yet con- 
vinced that the anti-slavery cause was to be best 
furthered by cutting loose from the party in which 
he had attained leadership. 

Sumner selected a seat next to Chase on the 
Democratic side, — the seat which had recently been 
vacated by Jefferson Davis. Contrary to the pre- 
dictions of the Boston press, he was cordially re- 
ceived by his colleagues, not only of the North but 
of the South as well. The seats of Butler of South 
Carolina and Mason of Virginia were close to Sum- 
ner's and they were soon on friendly terms. In 
Soule, whom Sumner described as "the most pol- 
ished gentleman of the Senate," he found a valued 
friend. But as a new member, without party back- 
ing, he was "shelved" in the committee assign- 
ments, being placed at the foot of two of the least 
important,— on roads and canals, and on revolu- 
tionary claims. 

In personnel the Senate was then far from its 
highest plane. Most of its members had had but 
scanty training for statesmanship, and years spent 
in Congress had not broadened them. There was 
little of elevation in congressional manners or con- 
versation. Liquors were always at hand, and their 
effects were too frequently apparent in the course 
of the debates. Tobacco chewing was prevalent. 
It is not strange that Sumner, of Puritan stock, 
reared in the best education and culture which Har- 



SENATE BEGINNINGS 141 

vard and Boston could impart, and broadened by 
years of travel and intimate association with the 
foremost scholars, judges and statesmen of Europe, 
should have confided to Longfellow, in these first 
weeks of his life in Washington : "I feel heart-sick 
here. The Senate is a lone place, with few who are 
capable of yielding any true sympathy to me. 
. . . Would that I were with you, and could 
share your calm thoughts! As for me, farewell 
content; farewell the tranquil mind!" He saw 
everywhere the trail of the serpent: "In truth, 
slavery is the source of all our baseness, from gigan- 
tic national issues down to the vile manners and 
profuse expectorations of this place." 1 His depres- 
sion may well have been due to the crush of unfa- 
miliar duties, all of which he took most seriously, 
and in part to his lonely life. On coming to Wash- 
ington, he secured lodgings on the ground floor of a 
house on New York Avenue, between Fifteenth and 
Sixteenth Streets. Here his breakfast was served ; 
for dinner, his only other meal, he frequented a 
French restaurant, where two or three other men in 
official life became his regular table companions. 
This cheerless mode of life found some relief in the 
cordiality with which he was received by members 
of the diplomatic corps, to whom his facile use of 
French, a rare accomplishment among congressmen 
of that day, and his familiar knowledge of European 
society and politics, especially commended him. At 
the British embassy and at the home of the Spanish 
1 December 28, 1851. 



142 CHARLES SUMNER 

minister he was warmly welcomed. The two sena- 
tors from Xew York were especially cordial to him. 
The junior, Hamilton Fish, had taken the oath of 
office at the same time with Sumner, and their lives 
were destined to influence each other profoundly in 
later years. In both Mrs. Fish and Mrs. Seward 
Sumner found staunch friends, who watched his 
career with eager sympathy and heartened him for 
his great task. 

Ten days after the opening of the session Sumner 
first addressed the Senate upon a resolution offered 
by Seward, which gave to Louis Kossuth, the Hun- 
garian patriot, in behalf of the people of the United 
States, { i a cordial welcome to the capital and to the 
country. ' ' Kossuth had come to America in response 
to an invitation from Congress, and upon a United 
States steam frigate. Sumner spoke but briefly. 1 
He paid an appreciative tribute to Kossuth's efforts 
in behalf of his countrymen, and urged the propriety 
of his being formally received by Congress in view 
of the invitation which Congress had tendered him. 
But he took occasion to emphasize our traditional 
policy of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of 
other nations, and vigorously oj)posed any departure 
from this policy by steps which might lead to bellig- 
erent intervention in European affairs. The resolu- 
tion was passed in the form Sumner advocated, and 
Kossuth found in Washington a cordial reception at 
the hands of Congress and great sympathy and per- 
sonal kindness; but the tide of popular sentiment, 
December 10, 1851. Works, Vol. Ill, pp. 1-10. 



SENATE BEGINNINGS 143 

which he had counted upon turning to the active 
service of the Hungarian revolution, had already 
waned, largely owing to this maiden speech of 
Sumner's. 

This speech was declared the most successful 
first speech which had been made in the Senate for 
a long time, and a Boston Whig editor, who heard 
it, said that Sumner had " achieved a triumph." 
It was a surprise to his opponents and a reassurance 
to his doubtful supporters to find Sumner, who had 
been heralded as a radical of one idea, prepared to 
deal in statesmanlike fashion with a problem of for- 
eign relations, and to stand forth as the most vigor- 
ous defender of the faith of the Fathers. Singularly, 
it was from party and personal friends that the se- 
vere criticisms came. The Free Soilers, eager to fill 
their depleted ranks before the beginning of the next 
campaign, had hoped that the sentiments aroused in 
behalf of the struggling Hungarians would react to 
the advantage of the champions of freedom in this 
country. Wilson deplored the conservatism which 
would hold Congress back from active and armed 
intervention. From Howe, a lifelong revolutionist, 
came a reproachful letter deprecating "this speech 
of Lawyer Sumner, Senator Sumner,— not of gener- 
ous, chivalrous, high-souled Charles Sumner." 

The next cause to which he turned his attention 
was one in which Massachusetts felt little interest. 
He advocated a grant of lands to the state of Iowa 
to promote the construction of railroads within that 
state. Friendly recognition from the West rewarded 



144 OHAELES SUMNEK 

this evidence of his ability and disposition to handle 
the general problems which confront the legislator. 
He concerned himself conscientiously with many 
such during this first session, advocating, in partic- 
ular, an increase in the pay of enlisted men in the 
navy, cheaper ocean postage, and the revision and 
codification of the public statutes. 

Kot a little of Sumner's time, during his first 
months in Washington, was devoted to an attempt 
to procure the release of Drayton and Sayres, of the 
schooner Pearl, who for four years had been in prison 
under sentence of fines which they could not pay. 
A petition, largely signed by Free Soilers, was for- 
warded to Sumner for presentation in the Senate. 
But in his opinion the chief thing was to secure the 
prisoners' release, and, believing that agitation in 
the Senate would be likely to defeat that object, in- 
stead of presenting the petition he appealed directly 
to the President for the prisoners' pardon, with such 
effective importunity that the order was given for 
their release. His success in this matter is the more 
surprising in view of the fierce attack made, in his 
Faneuil Hall speech, upon Fillmore as the President 
who had signed the Fugitive Slave Law. 

Sumner had owed his election to the Senate 
simply and solely to the belief that he was the most 
forceful and fearless champion whom the Free 
Soilers could put forward. Moreover, his one 
weapon, it had been supposed, was ready and 
effective speech. Yet days, weeks, months of this 
critical session passed, and no word came from 



SENATE BEGINNINGS 145 

Sumner's lips on the one absorbing topic of in- 
terest. Not only did lie seem to seek no oppor- 
tunity to speak upon it, but he was silent when the 
opportunity was thrust upon him, as in the petition 
for the release of Drayton and Sayres, — sent to the 
Senate as a peg on which to hang a speech,— 
and as in the angry discussion of Foote's resolution 
declaring the Compromise a final settlement of 
questions relating to slavery. The Whig press 
teemed with taunts, and this long-continued silence 
came to disquiet greatly the members of his own 
party. The letter which communicated to him the 
fact that the Free Soilers in the Massachusetts legis- 
lature had practically unanimously placed Sumner 
in nomination for the Senate, had ended with the 
words : ' ' We have sworn to stand by you ; to sink 
or swim with you, at all hazards. If you shall fail 
us in any respect, may God forgive you ! we never 
shall ! " The memory of Webster's defection was 
still so fresh in men's minds, that suspicion found 
congenial soil. Sumner's intimates never doubted 
his steadfastness of purpose, and were disposed to 
rely upon his judgment as to the time when he 
should speak. But Garrison repeatedly attacked 
Sumner in the Liberator, and popular impatience 
among anti-slavery men who did not know him 
personally was growing rapidly, so that Wilson, 
Sumner's political mentor, felt obliged to warn 
him : " You must not let the session close without 
speaking. Should you do so, you would be openly 
denounced by nine- tenths of our people. They say 



146 CHARLES SUMXER 

they are daily tormented about your silence by the 
Whigs all over the state, and many of them think 
you will not speak at all." l 

In these seven months of delay, however, Sumner 
had not wavered from his fixed purpose. His de- 
termination to make haste slowly had been deliber- 
ately taken. Six months before he took his seat, 
he had written to a friend : "As a stranger to the 
Senate and to all legislative bodies, I regard it to 
be my first duty to understand the body in which I 
have a seat before rushing into its contests." Early 
in the session he had resolved that, unless forced to 
do so by the course of the debates, he would not 
speak at length upon the slavery question until 
about the first of July. Meanwhile he was gather- 
ing material and deciding upon his lines of attack. 
But as the time he had chosen approached, he met 
unexpected obstacles. Overwork and the heat told 
upon his strength, so that for weeks he was far 
from equal to his task. At last, July 27th, he 
sought to make an opening for his speech, by pre- 
senting a resolution, "instructing the Committee on 
the Judiciary to report a bill repealing the Fugitive 
Slave Act." The next day— stating that his inex- 
perience and his ill health had prevented his seek- 
ing this opportunity earlier — he moved to take up 
this resolution. It was the uniform custom of the 
Senate to grant such a privilege, yet so eager were 
the members of both the great parties to keep all 
discussion of slavery questions in abeyance during 

1 Juue 29, 1852. 



SENATE BEGINNINGS 147 

the impending presidential campaign, that his mo- 
tion was rejected by a vote of three to one. Sum- 
ner was sorely disappointed, for he had relied with 
confidence upon senatorial courtesy to secure him 
a hearing. But now the disillusionment was com- 
plete : " You may speak next term," said Mason 
to him. " I must speak this term," was his reply. 

" By , you shan't!" retorted Mason. "I 

will, and you can't prevent me ! " was Sumner's re- 
joinder. But he now saw that he could secure a 
hearing only in case he could claim it as a right, 
not as a privilege. This first failure called forth 
fresh taunts from the Whig press, while the Free 
Soilers began to abandon hope that Sumner would 
get the floor before the end of the session, and 
Wilson and Parker wrote most urgent letters, em- 
phasizing how serious the consequences of such 
failure must be, both for him and for the cause they 
all had at heart. But Sumner was convinced that 
his course was the wise one : had he introduced a 
bill, he could have spoken only by unanimous con- 
sent; he therefore proposed "to throw himself upon 
the majority and to compel them to the ignoble 
position before the country of suppressing de- 
bate." 1 

When these friendly but urgent promptings 
reached him, only three weeks of the session yet re- 
mained. Sumner was on the alert and his plan 
well formed. Finally, only five days before the 
end of the nine-months session, his opportunity 
1 Letter to E. L. Pierce, Vol. Ill, p. 292. 



148 CHARLES SUMNER 

came. On the 26th of August, Huuter of Virginia, 
for the committee having charge of the civil and 
diplomatic appropriation bill, "moved an amend- 
ment for paying the i extraordinary exj^enses' 
incurred by ministerial officers in executing the 
laws." Sumner, by consultation with the auditor, 
had definitely informed himself in advance that 
among the charges intended to be covered were 
some due to the enforcing of the Fugitive Slave Law. 
He therefore moved the amendment : "provided, 
that no such allowance shall be authorized for any 
expenses incurred in executing the Act of Septem- 
ber 18, 1850, for the surrender of fugitives from 
service or labor, which Act is hereby repealed," 
and instantly took the floor to speak to his motion. 
He reminded his colleagues that he had sought an 
earlier opportunity, which had been denied him, 
but that at last he was to be heard, not as a favor, 
but as a right. 1 

From the outset, Sumner made it evident that the 
restraints of personal ambition or of party ex- 
pediency, which had silenced or diverted so many 
others, would not constrain him. 



"Sir, I have never been a politician. The slave 
of principles, I call no party master. . . . By no 
effort, by no desire of my own, I find myself a 
senator of the United Stales. Never before have I 
held public office of any kind. 1 ' 

1 " Freedom National, Slavery Sectional," Works, Vol III, 
pp. 87-197. 



SENATE BEGINNINGS 149 

Boldly assailing the dictum of finality of the 
Compromise measures, which the conventions of 
both the great parties had recently affirmed, he 
pointed out that the Fathers expressly provided 
that the Constitution, the supreme law of the land, 
should have its prescribed process of amendment. 
" Nothing from man's hand is final. Truth alone 
is final." He denounced this doctrine of finality as 
not only inconsistent and absurd, but as tyrannical 
in its attempted suppression of free speech ; yet, he 
declared, it was as impotent as it was tyrannical. 

"Convictions of the heart cannot be repressed. 
Utterances of conscience must be heard. They 
break forth with impressible might. As well 
attempt to check the tides of ocean, the currents of 
the Mississippi, or the rushing waters of Niagara. 
The discussion of slavery will proceed, wherever two 
or three are gathered together, — by the fireside, on 
the highway, at the public meeting, in the church. 
The movement against slavery is from the Everlast- 
ing Arm. Even now it is gathering its forces, soon 
to be confessed everywhere. It may not be frit yet 
in the high places of office and power, but all who 
can put their ears humbly to the ground, will hear 
and comprehend its incessant and advancing tread. ' ' 

For years the apologists for slavery had been 
decrying any attempt to curb its advance as an 
aggression on the part of the North. In bold chal- 
lenge of this assumption, Sumner declared: " Ac- 
cording to the true spirit of the Constitution and the 
sentiments of the Fathers, slavery and not freedom, 
is sectional, while freedom, and not slavery, is na- 



150 CHAKLES SUMNER 

tional." In upholding this thesis, he first contended 
that slavery was of such offensive character — "so 
eminent, so transcendent, so tyrannical, so unjust" 
— that it could find sanction only in positive law ; 
that it found no such positive sanction in the Con- 
stitution, which (in the light of the Convention's 
Debates, the Declaration of Independence, and the 
Address of the Continental Congress) must be in- 
terpreted openly, actively and perpetually for 
freedom ; that at the time when Washington first 
became President, "slavery had no national power, 
existed nowhere on the national territory, beneath 
the national flag, but was openly condemned by the 
nation, church, colleges and literature of the time.'' 
In support of these assertions, he brought forward a 
great mass of evidence, — none of it more telling than 
the words in condemnation of slavery and in favor 
of "the sacred cause" of emancipation from the 
lips of the three great Virginians, the Father of his 
Country, the Author of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, and the Orator of Liberty. He laid 
especial emphasis upon the words of the Amend- 
ment : "Ho person shall be deprived of life, liberty 
or property, without due process of laic," insisting 
that the convention's rejection of a restriction of 
this guaranty to freemen instead of "persons" 
(which he proved was explicit and deliberate) 
carried with it "an express guaranty of personal 
liberty, and an express prohibition of its invasion 
anywhere, at least within the national jurisdiction." 
But Sumner reserved most of his strength for an 



SENATE BEGINNINGS 151 

arraignment of the "Fugitive Slave Bill " — for so 
he always meant to term it, never conceding that 
it had the force of valid law. Sumner first exposed 
the falsity of the assertion that the provision of the 
Constitution, which was claimed as its basis, was 
one to which any especial importance had been 
attached, still less that it had been one of the great 
compromises on which had hinged the fate of the 
Constitution. He showed that it appeared in none 
of the seven plans or drafts j that there was no sug- 
gestion of such a provision till almost the very end 
of the sessions when, with little preliminary con- 
sideration, a clause for the surrender of " persons 
bound to service or labor" was moved, and adopted 
without debate or opposition of any kind. He 
pointed out that in the debates over the ratification 
of the Constitution, this vague provision aroused 
little comment, and was variously interpreted, a 
Virginian declaring that it contained ' ' no security 
of property." The fugitive slave law of 1793 had 
attracted little attention ; although it had been 
rarely enforced, and sometimes ' ' gloriously refused 
compliance" in Northern states, nevertheless the 
one attempt (1817-18) to amend it so as to pro- 
vide more effectively by law for the reclaiming 
of slaves, had been dropped, so that the Act of 1793 
had stood unchanged till 1850. 

Approaching this notorious measure, Sumner said : 

"As I read this statute, I am filled with painful 
emotions. The masterly subtlety with which it is 
drawn might challenge admiration, if exerted for a 



152 CHARLES SUMNER 

benevolent purpose ; but in an age of sensibility 
and refinement, a machine of torture, however skil- 
ful and apt, cannot be regarded without horror. 
Sir, in the name of the Constitution, which it vio- 
lates, of my Country, which it dishonors, of Human- 
ity, which it degrades, of Christianity, which it 
offends, I arraign this enactment, and now hold it 
up to the judgment of the Senate and the world. 
Again, I shrink from no responsibility. I may 
seem to stand alone ; but all the patriots and 
martyrs of history, all the Fathers of the Republic, 
are with me. Sir, there is no attribute of God 
which does not take part against this Act." 

Meeting the objection that the fugitive slave law 
of 1793 had been sustained by the Supreme Court, 
Sumner cited instances where that Court had re- 
versed its own precedents. While he declared its 
decisions entitled to great consideration, he never- 
theless gave his approval to Jackson's dictum that 
"each public officer wlio takes an oath to support 
the Constitution swears that he will support it as lie 
understands it, and not as it is understood by 
others." He maintained that the fugitive slave 
clause, as some called it, was merely an article of 
compact between the states, and that since the Con- 
stitution did not accompany this by any grant 
of power (as it did in the clause, similar in form, 
relating to the proving of state acts and records) 
this silence should be interpreted as indicating (he 
convention's intent that no such power should be 
granted. He therefore denounced the Act not only 
as an unwarrantable assumption of power by the 



SENATE BEGINNINGS 153 

nation, but as au infraction of the rights reserved to 
the states. 1 

He next attacked the law as radically unconstitu- 
tional because of its denial of trial by jury. 

"If the language of the Constitution were open to 
doubt, which it is not, still all the presumptions of 
law, all the leanings of Freedom, all the suggestions 
of justice, plead angel-tongued for this right. No- 
body doubts that Congress, if it legislates on this 
matter, may allow a trial by jury. But if it may, so 
overwhelming is the claim of justice, it must. ; 



)i 



He pointed out that the Stamp Act had been oj3- 
posed by the Fathers for precisely the reasons now 
urged against this : that it was a usurpation by 
Parliament of powers which did not belong to it, 
and an infraction of rights reserved to the Colonies, 
and that it was a denial of trial by jury in certain 
cases of property. 

" Sir, in placing the Stamp Act by the side of the 
Slave Act, I do injustice to that emanation of Brit- 
ish tyranny. Both infringe important rights : one, 
of property ; the other, the vital right of all, which 

*It has been well noted that Sumner and other Free Soilers. 
in their eagerness to find constitutional justification for the 
defense of national legislation against slavery, took almost the 
same ground as did secessionist pro-slavery men in asserting the 
compact theory of the Constitution, and the reserved rights of 
the^ states. In comment on Sumner's argument that "the 
fugitive servant clause of the Constitution was a clause of com- 
pact between the states, and conferred no legislative power 
upon Congress," Salmon P. Chase said : " I avow my convic- 
tion, now and here, that logically and historically his argument 
is impregnable, entirely impregnable." 



154 CHARLES SUMXER 

is to other rights as soul to body — the right of a man 
to himself . . . . As Freedom is more than prop- 
erty, as man is above the dollar that he owns, as 
heaven, to which we all aspire, is higher than earth, 
where every accumulation of wealth must ever re- 
main, so are the rights assailed by the American 
Congress higher than those once assailed by the 
British Parliament. And just in this degree must 
history condemn the Slave Act more than the Stamp 
Act." 

Sumner next laid stress upon the contention that, 
even if the Act were constitutional, it lacked "that 
essential support in the Public Conscience of States, 
where it is to be enforced, which is the life of all 
laws, and without which any law must be a dead 
letter.' , And he quoted with great effect a thereto- 
fore unpublished letter from Washington to the col- 
lector at Portsmouth, whither one of his slaves had 
escaped. Although expressing his own wish and 
that of Mrs. Washington that the slave be returned, 
he added that he did not mean that "violent meas- 
ures should be used, as would excite a mob or riot — 
which might be the case if she has adherents — or 
even uneasy sensations in the minds of well-disposed 
citizens. Rather than either of these should happen, 
I would forego her services altogether ; and the ex- 
ample, also, which is of infinite more importance." 1 

" But [Sumner pointed out] with every attempt 
to administer the Slave Act, it constantly becomes 
more revolting, particularly in its influence on the 
agents it enlists. Pitch cannot be touched without 

1 Works, Vol. Ill, p. 178. 



SEX ATE BEGINNINGS 155 

defilement, and all who lend themselves to this work 
seem at once to lose the better part of man. The 
spirit of the law passes into them, as the devils en- 
tered the swine. . . . Not a ease occurs which does 
not harrow the souls of good men, and bring tears of 
sympathy to the eyes, and those nobler tears which 
'patriots shed o'er dying laws.'" "Even in the 
lands of Slavery, the slave-trader is loathed as an 
ignoble character, from whom the countenance is 
turned away ; and can the slave-hunter be more re- 
garded, while pursuing his prey in a land of free- 
dom?" 

The conclusion of his speech was devoted to a 
solemn appeal : 

"The Slave Act violates the Constitution, and 
shocks the Public Conscience. With modesty, and 
yet with firmness, let me add, sir, it offends against 
the Divine Law. No such enactment is entitled to 
support. The conscience of each person is the final 
arbiter. Not rashly would I set myself against any 
argument of law. This grave responsibility I would 
not lightly assume. But here the path of duty is 
clear. By the Supreme Law, which commands me to 
do no injustice, by the comprehensive Christian Law 
of Brotherhood, by the Constitution which I have sworn 

to Support, I AM BOUND TO DISOBEY THIS ACT. 

Never in any capacity, can I render voluntary aid in 
its execution. Pains and penalties I will endure, but 
this great wrong I will not do. . . . Finally, 
sir, for the sake of peace and tranquillity, cease to 
shock the Public Conscience ; for the sake of the 
Constitution, cease to exercise a power nowhere 
granted, and which violates inviolable rights ex- 
pressly secured. . . . Repeal this enactment. Let 
its terrors no longer rage through the land. Mindful 
of the lowly whom it pursues, mindful of the good 



156 CHAELES SUMNEK 

men perplexed by its requirements, in the name of 
charity, in the name of the Constitution, repeal this 
enactment, totally aucl without delay." 

Sumner had been speaking for three and three- 
quarter hours. Meantime the galleries had filled. 
Webster, himself, was au attentive listener for an 
hour or more, this being, it is said, his last visit to 
the Senate chamber. Sumner was not interrupted, 
but no sooner had he ceased speaking thau the abuse 
began. Clemens of Alabama expressed the hope 
that none of his friends would make any reply to 
the speech, "which the seuator from Massachusetts 
has seen fit to inflict upon the Senate," adding : "I 
shall only say, sir, that the ravings of a maniac may 
sometimes be dangerous, but the barking of a puppy 
never did any harm." Xot till, later in the debate, 
he referred to the other seuator from Massachusetts 
as "one who has the fortune to be a gentleman, 
which his colleague has not," was he called to order. 
Badger of [North Carolina took upou himself the 
burden of replying in behalf of the Southern sena- 
tors. He quoted at length from Sumner's Faueuil 
Hall speech, and sought to make Sumner respon- 
sible for sedition. He did not hesitate to suggest 
with a sneer that to Southern senators further asso- 
ciation with the author of such a speech might not 
be agreeable. 1 Weller of California characterized 

1 It is creditable to both of these men that in later years they 
came to regret profoundly their gross abuse on this occasion. 
Badger was quite melted by Sumner's characteristic magna- 
nimity, the following year, in supporting both by speech and 
by vote his nomination for the Supreme Court. 



SENATE BEGINNINGS 157 

Sumner's speech as inflammatory, and indirectly, at 
least, counseling forcible resistance. This Sumner 
earnestly denied. Quite a number of senators, in- 
cluding three from New England, spoke in opposi- 
tion to Sumner's amendment, while Douglas and 
Dodge took a positive stand in defense of the con- 
stitutionality of the Fugitive Slave Act. 

The only men who came to Sumner's support 
were his two Free Soil colleagues. Hale declared 
that Sumner had that day placed himself side by 
side with the first orators of antiquity, and as far 
ahead of any living American orator as freedom is 
ahead of slavery. Chase affirmed his entire agree- 
ment with Sumner's interpretations of the Constitu- 
tion, and declared that this speech would ' ' mark a 
new era in American history." 

Sumner's amendment secured but three votes be- 
sides his own, — those of Chase, Hale and Wade. 
His own colleague was among those who dodged the 
vote, as did also Seward, while Fish aud four 
New England senators were among the forty -seven 
who openly voted against the repeal of the Fugitive 
Slave Law. It is interesting that the first note of 
congratulation to reach Sumner should have been a 
most cordial one from Mrs. Fish, soon followed by 
a sympathetic and encouraging letter from Mrs. 
Seward. Seward, himself, wrote to Sumner that 
his speech was "an admirable, a great, a very 
great one." 

The meaning and effect of Sumner's speech are 
not to be gauged by its failure to convert a single 



158 CHAELES SUMNER 

politician or compromiser to vote for the repeal of 
the law. Chase caught its immense significance 
when he said that it marked the day when the ad- 
vocates of the restriction of slavery, "no longer 
content to stand on the defensive in the contest with 
slavery, boldly attacked the very citadel of its 
power in that doctrine of finality, which two of the 
political parties of the country, through their 
national organizations, are endeavoring to estab- 
lish as the impregnable defense of its usurpations." 
Theodore Parker's hope had been realized : here 
was " the senator with a conscience," — a man whom 
no sneers or threats could silence, who owned no 
allegiance to party or to boss, who held office-seek- 
ing expediency in contempt, and who would speak 
what he believed to be the truth not in mincing 
phrases but with all his titantic power of denuncia- 
tion. Well might Horace Mann write home to 
Massachusetts: "The 26th of August, 1852, re- 
deemed the 7th of March, 1850." 



CHAPTER IX 

POLITICAL REVOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 

For the eighteen mouths following this speech 
of Sumner's, the chief interest passes from Congress 
to the struggles connected with the national elec- 
tion of 1852 and with the seething political elements 
in Massachusetts. 

In the months preceding the national conventions, 
there had been much anxious discussion among 
Free Soilers as to the course which they should 
pursue. Sumner's counsel had been for absolute 
independence, without the least commitment, until 
they could act with knowledge. But when both 
parties had pledged themselves to acceptance of the 
finality of the Compromise, his message to Massa- 
chusetts friends of Freedom was to uphold her sup- 
porters, and leave the result to Providence. The 
Free Soilers nominated John P. Hale, but through- 
out the country the campaign lacked spirit, and in 
Massachusetts the Free Soil vote fell off more than 
twenty-five per cent. The state election followed 
the national almost immediately. For two years the 
Bay State Free Soilers had cooperated with the Dem- 
ocrats, with tangible results in state and national 
elections. But in the midst of a presidential cam- 
paign, where the platforms and presidential candi- 
dates were pledged to " finality," it was not likely 



160 CHAELES SUMNER 

that local coalition would prove so feasible as in 
former years. At the Free Soil convention, hardly a 
fortnight after Sumner's epoch-making speech, he 
was greeted with great enthusiasm. In his address 
he emphasized strongly the frequent necessity of 
third parties and the high service which they may 
render. 

The Free Soilers entered upon the campaign with 
hopes of securing further gains both at home and 
in Congress, but they found the Democrats little 
disposed to coalition, and the unpopularity of the 
" Maine law" which had been enacted with strong 
support from the Free Soilers, now reacted against 
them. The outcome was the loss of the legislature 
by about ten members, and this involved also the 
loss of United States senator and of the state offices 
which were to be filled by the legislature. For this 
disaster not a little of the blame was with consider- 
able justice visited upon Sumner, who, after his 
speech at the convention, had gone upon visits out 
of the state, entirely absenting himself from the 
campaign. Sumner had little facility in extem- 
poraneous speech or in recasting his thought, 
which he had once elaborated, and it is believed 
that he was reluctant to take the stump, when he 
had so recently fully delivered his views. Never- 
theless, his official position and his unrivaled elo- 
quence would have counted for much ; as he grew 
more experienced in politics, he came to regard 
himself as subject to draft, whenever his service 
was needed to promote the cause he had at heart. 



KEVOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 161 

The Whigs, in whose hands the election had 
placed the naming of Sumner's future colleague in 
the Senate, promptly chose Edward Everett, a 
selection as acceptable to Sumner and the Free 
Soilers as that of any compromise Whig could be. 

Although Democrats and Free Soilers failed in 
their attempt at cooperation for the election of of- 
ficers in 1852, they nevertheless carried to success a 
cause in which their interests were better united, — 
the call for a convention to revise the Constitution 
of the commonwealth. Upon this issue they were 
opposed by the solid Whig vote, for one of the 
chief objects for which revision was urged was to 
remedy the system of representation which worked 
to the unfair advantage of the Whigs. 1 An ener- 
getic campaign resulted in the election of a conven- 
tion made up of delegates of unusual ability. The 
Free Soil representation was exceptionally strong : 
towns were allowed to elect non-residents, and Henry 
Wilson did expert work in suggesting men of force 
and prominence for towns where Whigs might pos- 
sibly be defeated. It was in this way that, without 
having been consulted and somewhat to his annoy- 
ance, Sumner found himself the Free Soil candi- 
date for Marshfield, pitted against Fletcher Webster, 
the son of the great statesman who had died but a 
few weeks before. His election by a vote of more 
than five to two was intended as an indication that the 
Compromise was repudiated in Webster' sown town. 

Sumner was chairman of an important committee 
1 Supra, p. 126. 



1G2 CHARLES SUMNER 

of the convention, but did not take a very active 
part in its debates, except upon the fundamental 
question of the basis of representation. The coali- 
tion leaders advocated a compromise measure, which 
would make numerical inequality favor small towns, 
instead of overweighting the large cities, as the old 
system had done. Such twistings of institutions to 
suit temporary partisan advantage did not appeal to 
Sumner, and he made a vigorous argument in favor 
of a simple district system, which would ensure 
equality of representation to the voters of the com- 
monwealth. His plan met with little favor, and he 
finally supported the one already proposed, since it 
was a long step toward fairness in the districting of 
cities. Consistent with his recent argument in the 
Senate against the finality of any human law, Sum- 
ner secured the inclusion, among the propositions to 
be voted upon by the people, of a provision requir- 
ing the legislature, upon the request of the towns or 
cities containing not less than one-third of the legal 
voters of the commonwealth, to submit to popular 
vote the question whether a convention should be 
called for the purpose of revising the Constitution. 

The advocates of the new Constitution entered 
upon the fall campaign with high hopes, for they 
had had a majority of 10,000 in calling the conven- 
tion and its work had been of great merit. The 
Free Soilers put Wilson in nomination for governor 
and began a well-planned and sharply contested cam- 
paign. Profiting by the criticism of the previous 
year, Sumner took upon himself his full share of the 



REVOLUTION LN MASSACHUSETTS 163 

work. He went to seventeen of the largest cities 
and towns of the state, and his arguments were con- 
sidered the most effective of the whole contest. He 
usually spoke for nearly three hours, discussing and 
explainiDg the proposed changes in the Constitution 
and especially emphasizing the needed improvement 
in the basis of representation. Xor did he hesitate 
to inject into this speech his favorite anti-slavery 
doctrines. 

But the new Constitution and the coalition were 
foredoomed to failure. Unexpected obstacles and 
foes appeared. Not only did the Whigs as a body 
oppose the new Constitution but their zeal was 
quickened by the unlooked-for support of Adams 
and Palfrey who now came out against the work of 
the convention. From Washington came what was 
known as " dishing' s ukase," — a letter from the 
Attorney-General virtually forbidding, under pain 
of the administration's disfavor, any cooperation of 
Democrats with Free Soilers. For the first time, 
too, the Irish vote was made a prominent factor in a 
Massachusetts campaign. The strength of that na- 
tionality was largely centred in Boston, and hence 
was enlisted (under the positive intervention of the 
Catholic Church, as Sumner charged) against a meas- 
ure which would have cut down the relative political 
influence of that city. The unpopular liquor law 
again proved a divisive factor. The result was that 
the new Constitution was defeated by nearly 5,000 
votes, and the Whigs carried the election of the 
legislature, thus ensuring also the defeat of Wilson. 



164 CHARLES SUMNER 

For Sumner, himself, the year had not been with- 
out its gains. In the constitutional convention he 
had made the acquaintance of leading men from all 
over the state, and they had found him not a mere 
anti-slavery fanatic, as he had been pictured, but an 
affable, well-informed man and a tireless worker. 
In the ensuing campaign he had commended himself 
to the people in all parts of the state, not more by 
his eloquence than by his sagacious and persuasive 
discussion of matters of home politics. Neverthe- 
less, the outlook was far from bright. Further coali- 
tion between Democrats and Free Soilers in Massa- 
chusetts was not to be looked for, after the disastrous 
failure of this campaign. The insolence of the 
Whigs over their unhoped-for victory knew no 
bounds. Though Sumner's term had yet four years 
to run, the Whig journals began to call upon him to 
resign, declaring that he no longer had any constit- 
uency back of him. They were merciless in their 
taunts. Said one prominent Free Soiler : "Which- 
ever way we go, we are jeered, hissed, pointed at 
and spit upon by Whiggery." Upon Wilson in 
particular they poured out their gibes. His career 
was apparently at an end, and he was forced to re- 
sume his unsuccessful attempts at shoe-manufactur- 
ing, despondent of the future. 

Among these exultant Whigs, who would have 
listened to a Cassandra prophecy that the national 
Whig party was doomed to speedy disruption, that 
only a twelvemonth later in Massachusetts the now 
triumphant Whig organization would suffer polit- 



EE VOLUTION m MASSACHUSETTS 105 

ical annihilation, and that this derided Henry Wil- 
son would then be sent to the Senate as Sumner's 
loyal fellow- worker, and put in line for the Vice- 
Presidency of the United States ! 

Sumner's second session in the Senate (December, 
1852, to March, 1853), had been of little interest. 
At its beginning, the names of Hale, Chase and 
Sumner were omitted from the committee-list upon 
the express ground that they were "outside of any 
healthy political organization." As questions re- 
lating to slavery were held in abeyance in these 
closing months of a defeated administration, Sum- 
ner took no very active part in the routine work of 
the Senate, not yet being ready to adopt the repeated 
advice which Chase gave him, to " take off his coat 
and go into the every-day fight." 

At the beginning of the next Congress, — the first 
of Pierce's administration, — Chase and Sumner were 
the only Free Soilers in the Senate. The Demo- 
crats, in arranging the majority representation upon 
committees, recognized Chase, but in the Whig 
caucus Seward's motion to assign Sumner to certain 
committees was blocked by the opposition of his 
new colleague, Everett, who deprecated any action 
which would "recognize him as a Whig." The 
result was that the Democrats placed Sumner in 
vacancies left by the Whigs in the Committees on 
Pensions and Enrolled Bills. 

There was every prospect that the session would 
be marked by little of interest. Acquiescence in 
the finality of the Compromise, pledged by both 



166 CHAKLES SUMNEB 

great parties, was undoubtedly expected and desired 
by a large majority of the members of Congress. 
Yet hardly were the holidays past when the whole 
slavery issue was opened up, never again to be closed 
till w r reck of parties aud civil war had wrought out 
a solution far different from that sought by the 
anxious compromisers of 1850. The responsibility 
for this step, so big with consequences, rests upon 
Stephen A. Douglas, who as chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Territories, on January 4, 1854, presented 
a report upon the bill for the establishment of the 
territory of Nebraska, which included the provision 
that the status of slavery in this region, — dedicated 
to Freedom in accordance with the Missouri 
Compromise, — should be determined by the people 
of the territory, its admission to statehood being 
pledged " with or without slavery," as they might 
decide. The motive for this gratuitous open- 
ing of the slavery question can hardly be found 
elsewhere than in Douglas's desire to commend him- 
self strongly to the South, in anticipation of the 
election of 1856. The hint was eagerly taken up 
by the Southern leaders who saw a chance of secur- 
ing what they had supposed far beyond their grasp. 
It is not necessary here to review the various modih- 
cations made in this measure by its friends, all 
in the direction of a more aggressive attack upon 
what for a generation had been regarded as a 
solemn compact. Early in February the proposi- 
tion took the form of a new bill, providing for two 
territories, Kansas and Nebraska, and declaring the 



REVOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 167 

prohibition of slavery north of 36° 30' (1820) "in- 
operative and void" because inconsistent with the 
provisions of the legislation of 1850. 

Sumner had promptly met the hrst amendment 
repudiating that prohibition by a counter amend- 
ment explicitly precluding any weakening of that 
barrier. The true nature and effect of the measure 
was not generally understood, and its sponsors were 
urging its speedy enactment. Sumner therefore 
joined with Chase and with four members of the 
House in issuing the "Appeal of the Independent 
Democrats in Congress to the people of the United 
States." It stated clearly the inevitable effects of 
the proposed Act, "to open all the unorganized 
territory of the Union to the ingress of slavery," 
and continued: "We arraign this bill as a gross 
violation of a sacred pledge ; as a criminal betrayal 
of sacred rights ; as part and parcel of an atrocious 
plot to exclude from a vast and unoccupied region 
immigrants from the Old World and free laborers 
from our own states, and convert it into a dreary 
region of despotism, inhabited by masters and 
slaves." It sketched the history of the Missouri 
Compromise, and asserted that "not a man in 
Congress, or out of Congress, in 1850 pretended that 
the compromise measures would repeal the Missouri 
prohibition." It summoned the friends of Freedom 
at once to "protest against this enormous crime." ' 

Chase took the lead in putting forth this appeal, 

J See Rhodes, History of the United States from the Compromise 
of 1850, Vol. I, pp. 441-444. 



168 CHARLES SUMNER 

which had immense effect in arousing the North. 
It was Chase, also, who was the foremost champion 
of the North in the fierce debate which followed. 
But a heavy part of the work devolved upon the 
two senators from Massachusetts. It was a task 
which Edward Everett found far from congenial. 
He had entered the Senate, a few months before, 
full of enthusiasm for the new career, in the expecta- 
tion that the slavery issue had been permanently re- 
moved from that forum. He was the intimate 
friend and successor of Webster, and the representa- 
tive of Massachusetts Whig conservatism. He did 
not touch this unwelcome topic until he had assured 
himself that Massachusetts was thoroughly opposed 
to the new measure, and even then he spoke in an 
apologetic tone which was sorely disappointing to 
many of his constituents. Nevertheless, his words 
had much weight as standing for the great body of 
Whigs who had voted for the Compromise in 1850, 
but who had never considered that it annulled the 
prohibition of 1820, and who were now opposed to 
the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. This speech, represent- 
ing the attitude of men who had reached the limit 
of compromise, influenced many minds which would 
have remained closed to the arguments of radical 
leaders in Congress. In a high-minded but an un- 
aggressive address Seward took his stand with the 
opponents of the measure. Later in the month, 
Sumner got the floor. To a greater extent than 
the other speakers, he dwelt upon the evils of 
slavery, so that Douglas sneered at his speech as 



REVOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 169 

"a mere essay on slavery" ; but he made clear the 
absurdity of the claim that the Compromise of 1850 
annulled the prohibition of 1820, and drove home 
the charge of bad faith, inasmuch as this prohibi- 
tion had been the proposal of the South, which was 
now striving to repudiate it, while refusing to per- 
form its part of the agreement. Sumner had a 
faculty for coining telling phrases. In this speech 
his reference to u a Northern man with Southern 
principles" was instantly caught up by the crowded 
galleries, and figured prominently in later cam- 
paigns. In his reply, Douglas showed that he con- 
sidered himself hit by that phrase. In Massachu- 
setts and throughout the North the speech met with 
great favor, even with conservatives. Prescott 
wrote: "I don't see but what all Boston has got 
round ; in fact, we must call him [Sumner] the Massa- 
chusetts senator." Nevertheless, the Boston press 
still continued its boycott of Sumner by excluding 
from its pages this speech by which, as even Hil- 
lard declared, he had u gained credit everywhere 
throughout the North." 

While the bill was pending in Congress, public 
opinion was being gradually aroused in regard to it. 
In Massachusetts the Free Soilers took the lead, and 
called a state convention, which heard earnest 
speeches and passed strong resolutions. The men- 
tion of Sumner's name was " greeted with deafening 
applause." The legislature also voiced the protest 
of the state against the proposed bill. So deep was 
the feeling throughout the state that at the spring 



170 CHAELES SUMNER 

town-meetings in fully half the towns, after debate 
upon the question as duly presented by an article in 
the warrant, the townsmen by an almost unanimous 
vote declared the repeal of the prohibition in the 
Missouri Compromise "a perfidious and wicked 
act." Unsparing denunciation was hurled at the 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill from the pulpit. Even the 
''mercantile Whigs" of Boston were at last stirred. 
They assembled in Faneuil Hall, under the chair- 
manship of S. A. Eliot, and Hillard was one of the 
speakers. While their words lacked the fervor of 
the Abolitionists or Free Soilers, they were out- 
spoken in the assertion that the Compromise of 1850, 
to which they had given their assent, had in no way 
annulled the prohibition of 1820. The very holding 
of this meeting and its able speeches signified that 
even these conservatives had reached the limit of 
compromise, and had begun to believe that in 1850 
they had been swindled into paying too high a price 
for a truce with slavery. 

The incident which aroused most attention was 
the presentation to Congress of a petition signed by 
3,050 New England clergymen, representing all de- 
nominations, protesting "in the name of God and 
in His presence" against the passing of the pro- 
posed bill "as a great moral wrong, ... a 
breach of faith eminently unjust to the moral prin- 
ciples of the community, ... a measure fall 
of danger to the Union, and exposing us to the 
righteous judgments of the Almighty." This mon- 
ster petition, 200 feet long, was taken to Washington, 



REVOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 171 

and, in order that it might not seem like a partisan 
protest, it was Everett who was asked to bring it 
before the Senate. The task was obviously an 
unwelcome one, but he presented the paper without 
delay, calling attention to the nature of the petition 
and its significance because of the character of its 
signers. Upon his motion, it was then laid upon 
the table, without having been read. Presently, 
however, Douglas called for a reading of the memo- 
rial, and at its conclusion he launched into a fierce 
attack upon the " political preachers " and the im- 
propriety of their action, an arraignment in which 
Mason and Butler followed his lead. The tone of 
Everett's reply was almost abject, implying that he 
might not have presented the petition, had he had 
an opportunity to read it, and regretting that 
what he had done from a sense of duty should have 
caused hard feeling on the part of any of his col- 
leagues. Although he spoke in terms of commenda- 
tion of the petitioners, he gave the impression of 
wishing to shift all responsibility for having ob 
truded their unwelcome protest upon the Senate. 
There followed more coarse abuse from Butler and 
Pettit. Sumner longed to repel this attack, but ab- 
stained from speaking partly out of a feeling of del- 
icacy toward Everett, and partly at the urging of 
General Houston, who insisted upon taking the de- 
fense upon himself in order that it might not seem 
to be identified with Free Soilers. 

Two months later the Kansas-Nebraska Bill came 
back to the Senate for its concurrence with House 



172 CHAELES SUMNER 

amendments. Here its consideration was delayed 
one day by an objection interposed by Sumner, who 
never hesitated to filibuster in a cause which he 
thought righteous. The bill was now opposed by 
the same four senators who had at first protested 
against it, with one exception : Everett, apparently 
out of distaste for prolonged controversy over sla- 
very, had resigned the office which he had entered 
upon with enthusiasm but one year before. In his 
absence, Sumner took occasion, at the beginning of 
his speech, to present several belated petitions from 
New England clergymen, which had been intended 
for the earlier memorial. In contrast with Everett's 
apologetic presentation, Sumner announced that he 
did this service " with pleasure and pride," and he 
boldly vindicated the reverend petitioners' language 
and their action, declaring, "There are men in 
this Senate justly eminent for eloquence, learn- 
ing, and ability ; but there is no man here compe- 
tent, except in his own conceit, to sit in judgment 
on the clergy of New England." In eloquent aud 
zealous words, he showed how throughout New Eng- 
land's history, the clergy had been associated not 
only with the piety and learning but with the liber- 
ties of the country. 

Perhaps the most impressive part of the speech 
was the passage which forecast the effects of this leg- 
islation : "In passing such a bill as is now threat- 
ened, you scatter, from this dark midnight hour, no 
seeds of harmony and good -will, but broadcast 
through the land dragons' teeth, which haply may 



KE VOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 173 

not spring up in direful crops of armed men, yet I 
am assured, sir, will fructify in civil strife and 
feud." Yet " from the sting of this hour I find as- 
surance of that triumph by which freedom will be 
restored to her immortal birthright in the republic. 
. . . Am I not right, then, in calling this bill 
the best on which Congress ever acted I Sorrow- 
fully I bend before the wrong you commit, — joyfully 
I welcome the promise of the future." ' 

The very day when the Kansas-Nebraska Bill was 
passed in spite of Sumner's protest, was the day 
when the attempt was made by a crowd led by 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson to free the negro, 
Anthony Burns, from the Boston Court- House, 
where he was being held for a hearing before a 
United States commissioner, — an attempt which 
failed of its object, but resulted in the death of one 
of the guards from a pistol-shot. The excitement 
caused by the affair was prodigious, and some South- 
ern leaders tried to hold Sumner's words about 
" scattering dragons' teeth" responsible for this 
mob violence, reckless alike of their context in 
Sumner's speech and of the fact that his utterances 
were not known in Boston until the day after the 
attempted rescue of Burns. The bitterness of feel- 
ing was seen in angry articles in Washington pro- 
slavery papers, which were obviously intended to 
incite mob violence against Sumner. His friends 

J Mr. Rhodes, Vol. I, p. 490, says : "Judged by the succeed- 
ing events, the most remarkable expressions came from Sumner, 
for he had an insight into the future. " 



174 CHARLES SUMNER 

warned liini that his life was in danger, but in the 
midst of threats he was ever a fatalist, and he con- 
tinued to walk unarmed about the capital. 

One of the most striking evidences of the change 
which public sentiment was undergoing under the 
combined influence of the Kansas-Nebraska debates 
and the Burns case was a petition foi the repeal of 
the Fugitive Slave Act, which had been placed in 
the Boston Merchants' Exchange and had speedily 
been signed by nearly 3,000 men, mostly from the 
very class who had been zealous advocates of com- 
promise. Among the signers was even the ship 
captain who on two previous occasions had gained 
notoriety by ready assistance in the capture and re- 
turn of fugitive slaves. The presentation of this 
petition in the Senate gave rise to serious debate, 
in the course of which a senator from Tennessee de- 
nounced "such miserable miscreants as Parker, 
Phillips, and such kindred spirits," spoke of the 
pending petition as " teeming with treason and 
reeking with the blood of an innocent victim," and 
declared that the South would certainly dissolve 
the Union, if the Fugitive Slave Act were repealed. 
Sumner repelled this threat of disunion, and boldly 
defended Massachusetts against the charge of 
treason, instancing her opposition to the Stamp Act 
as a precedent for her present resistance in the 
cause of human rights. 

Up to the time of the Kansas- Nebraska debates 
Sumner had had no serious breaks with any of his 
colleagues ; their angry and disdainful epithets on 



REVOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 175 

the occasion of bis first auti- slavery speech he had 
passed over in silence. Even as late as January 14, 
1853, he had declared : " On the floor of the 
Senate I sit between Mr. Butler of South Carolina, 
the early suggester of the Fugitive Slave Bill, and 
Mr. Mason of Virginia, its final author, with both 
of whom I have constant and cordial intercourse/' 
But a change was now at hand. At the end of 
Sumner's speech upon this Boston petition, Butler 
poured contempt upon his " vapid rhetoric," and 
then faced him with the question, whether Massa- 
chusetts would execute the Constitution and send 
back fugitive slaves even after a jury trial. Sum- 
ner replied : " Does the honorable senator ask me 
if I would personally join in seuding a fellow man 
into bondage? Is thy servant a dog that he should 
do this thing?" Butler, in great excitement, 
shouted : " Then you would not obey the Constitu- 
tion. . . . You stand in my presence as a co- 
equal senator, and tell me that it is a dog's office to 
execute the Constitution of the United States!" 
' ' I recognize no such obligation, ' ' said Sumner, 
meaning, as Fessenden declared every one on the 
Whig side of the chamber understood, merely that 
he " did not consider that the Constitution imposed 
any such obligation upon him." But he was imme- 
diately set upon by Southern senators who charged 
him with repudiating his oath of office and with de- 
claring his intention to disobey the Constitution. 
"In a moral point of view," said Pettit of Indiana, 
" the senator from Massachusetts could not, in view 



176 CHARLES SUMNER 

of his declaration that day, find any one beneath 
himself," and he declared that such utterance justi- 
fied expulsion. Others expressed the same opinion, 
and there is evidence that within a few days the 
Senate was canvassed, but that it was found that 
the requisite vote of two-thirds could not be 
secured. 

When the debate was resumed a day or two later, 
the abuse of Sumner took an even more frenzied 
and vulgar tone. He was denounced as " a mis- 
creant," "a sneaking, sinuous, snake-like pol- 
troon," and a flood of less decent epithets was let 
loose upon him. At last he was stung to reply. 
Although at this stage of his career Sumner was 
slow to anger, few men ever succeeded in provok- 
ing him who did not find cause to regret it. He 
proudly refused to bandy epithets or to deign any 
reply to the more scurrilous of his assailants. To 
Butler's protest against his use of the term " slave- 
hunter," he rejoined: "Sir, I choose to call 
things by their right names. . . . And when a 
person degrades himself to the work of chasing a 
fellow man who under the inspiration of freedom 
and the guidance of the North Star has sought a 
freeman's home, far away from coffle or chain, that 
person, whosoever he may be, I call 'slave- 
hunter.' " Eeproaches against Massachusetts and 
against himself as to constitutional obligations he 
resented from the lips of a senator who represented 
a state which had expelled from her borders the 
venerable Samuel Hoar, which had tampered with 



KEVOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 177 

the United States mails, which was " seamed all 
over with the sears of nullification," and "threat- 
ened nullification as often as babies cry. " Butler 
had asserted that "the independence of America 
was won by the arms and treasure of slaveholding 
communities." Sumner now accepted the chal- 
lenge, and proved by indisputable evidence how 
comparatively insignificant had been the coopera- 
tion of South Carolina and of her sister slavehold- 
ing colonies in that movement, and that the excuse 
which they themselves had given at the time was 
"their weakness and fears growing out of their 
slave population." 1 Turning to "the veteran 
senator from Virginia" (Mason), who, "with an 
imperious look, and in the style of Sir Forcible 
Feeble, undertakes to call in question my statement 
that the Fugitive Slave Act denies the writ of 
habeas corpus" Sumner continued : " Sitting near 
him, ... I have come to know something of 
his conversation, something of his manners, some- 
thing of his attainments, something of his abilities, 
something of his character, — ay, sir, and something 
of his associations. . . . As senator of Massa- 
chusetts and as man, I place myself at every point 
in unhesitating comparison with that honorable 
assailant. And to his peremptory assertion that 
the Fugitive Slave Act does not deny the writ of 
habeas corpus I oppose my assertion, peremptory as 
his own, that it does ; and there I leave the issue." 
As to the charge that he had repudiated his oath, 
fierce, Vol. Ill, p. 384. 



178 CHARLES SUMMER 

Sumner declared that be had sworn to support the 
Constitution as he understood it, and appealed to 
well-known words of Jackson and of Buchanan as- 
serting this interpretation of the oath of a Federal 
official. " Does he [Sumner] recognize the obliga- 
tion to return a fugitive slave?" asked Toucey of 
Connecticut. "To that I answer distinctly, no!" 
was Sumner's reply, and with that the debate 
closed. 

Chase did not overrate the significance of Sum- 
ner's part in this debate when he said : " You have 
struck slavery the strongest blow it ever received ; 
you have made it reel to the centre." He had vin- 
dicated the right of free speech and freedom of 
petition in the Senate as John Quincy Adams had 
done in the House : hereafter anti-slavery petitions 
were duly presented and referred, instead of being 
suppressed. To the aggressive arrogance of the 
South he had shown an opposition as unyielding as 
adamant. At last there had appeared a champion 
for freedom, who knew no fear, whom angry looks 
or indecent epithets could not swerve a hair's 
breadth from the course he had laid down, and who 
was a master of debate, skilled in the use of weapons 
whose keenness and temper his angry assailants 
could not match. It is no wonder that they sought 
the expulsion of so formidable an antagonist, and 
that by common consent most of the Southern 
senators from this time honored him by avoiding 
all personal association with him as beneath the 
notice of gentlemen of their school. 



REVOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 179 

But from all parts of the North came words of 
strongest commendation of Sumner's course in this 
debate. His promptness and resourcefulness, his 
vindication of Massachusetts against unjust attack, 
his dignity and courage, his manly self-respect in 
maintaining his own opinion in the face of Mason's 
arrogant dictum, — all these made friends and ad- 
mirers in quarters where he had been held in slight 
regard. Even the time-serving press of Boston had 
to yield to the demand for the triumphant senator's 
speeches, which hitherto they had excluded or 
published only in garbled form. 

The point dealt with least positively in these de- 
bates was the precise attitude of the North toward 
the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act. More 
than once Sumner himself evaded the question or 
declined to define that attitude in advance. For 
himself, he never would admit that the phrase 
"persons held to service" was intended by its 
authors to apply to fugitive slaves, and hence he 
denied outright the constitutionality of the Act, 
He opposed unsuccessfully a proposal for a pension 
for the widow of the victim in the Burns rescue, on 
the ground that the service rendered by the victim 
was not of the nature for which pensions were 
granted and further that the Act under which the 
service was rendered was unconstitutional, and its 
enforcement repugnant to the moral sense of the 
states in which it was attempted. Failing in this 
effort, ho then sought to introduce a bill for the re- 
peal of the Act, but this was defeated by a majority 



180 CHAKLES SUMNER 

of twenty-five. It was significant, however, that 
instead of four votes, as two years before, his mo- 
tion now mustered ten in its favor, and that Seward, 
who before had politieally refrained from voting, 
now eame out in favor of repeal, while Fish, who 
had then supported the law, now advanced to the 
position of not voting upon the question. 

Never had Sumner eommauded so cordial a wel- 
come and so sympathetic a hearing as when, a few 
weeks after the close of the session, he appeared be- 
fore the state convention in Worcester. His speech 
kindled the most intense enthusiasm. He sought 
to vindicate the necessity of a third party in Mas- 
sachusetts, and to destroy there the operation of the 
Fugitive Slave Act, arguing that citizens were not 
constrained to its support. He certainly was tread- 
ing upon dangerous ground when although admit- 
ting that judgments were binding upon inferior 
tribunals and upon executive officers, he neverthe- 
less denied to judicial tribunals the power to dictate 
to Congress an interpretation of the Constitution or 
to bind the individual conscience. But the Fugitive 
Slave Law as Quiucy declared, had become "an in- 
supportable burden." 

Almost immediately after the passage of the 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, the project was agitated in 
Massachusetts of forming a new party under the 
name "Republican," in which those opposed to the 
extension of slavery, whatever their previous party 
affiliations, might cooperate for the attainment of 
that one object. In the early summer a committee 



REVOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 181 

of correspondence, of which Samuel Hoar and Ralph 
Waldo Emerson were members, was formed in Con- 
cord, and called a meeting of representative political 
leaders in Boston. Hardly any but Free Soilers 
responded to the summons, for the project had been 
antagonized by the Whig press, by prominent Whig 
leaders, as individuals, and by an address in which 
the Whig state committee declined to call a fusion 
convention, asserting that their party was still 
' ' the vanguard of the great army of constitutional 
liberty." 

This resistance of the Whigs of influence to the 
formation of a new party based on the one vital 
issue had a curious result. In New York City 
there had recently sprung up a secret order which 
represented a recrudescence of nativism. Its au- 
thoritative name is said to have been " The Supreme 
Order of the Star-Spangled Banner." It gradually 
obtained a foothold in other states, and aspired to 
affect state aud national politics. Conditions were 
ripe for its growth in Massachusetts. No other 
state with the exception of New York had as yet 
been so embarrassed and alarmed by the influx of 
needy immigrants, who were contributing far more 
than their quota to the asylums, jails and alms- 
houses, and were causing an upheaval in industrial 
relations. The growth of the Roman Catholic 
Church, too, was viewed with unreasoning though 
not unnatural alarm. The result was that in the 
distracted political situation which the Whigs now 
forced upon the people of Massachusetts, when the 



182 CHARLES SUMNER 

loyalty of tens of thousands of voters to the parties 
of their fathers was relaxed because those parties 
refused to face the dominant issue, this secret order 
made a strong appeal, particularly to young labor- 
ing men, throughout the commonwealth ; and, as 
it was felt to be gaining strength, not a few office- 
holders and politicians sought entrance to its lodges. 
Adams, Sumner, Palfrey and Andrew, and most of 
the other strong Free Soil leaders resisted this temp- 
tation, but Wilson became a member of the order, 
although he had already accepted the nomination 
of the Republicans for governor. Never was a 
greater surprise in the history of politics than on 
the day when the results of the state election were 
declared : this secret order, the mushroom growth 
of a night, was found to have swept the state, elect- 
ing all the state officers, the full delegation in Con- 
gress, and practically the entire membership of both 
houses of the state legislature. Wilson's election to 
the United States Senate, as the successor of Everett, 
was thus clearly presaged, and this was speedily 
carried into effect. 

The methods and some of the objects of the Know- 
Xothings were deemed unworthy by most Massa- 
chusetts men of light and leading, — by none more 
than by Sumner ; but their momentary success had 
the good effect of furnishing a new gathering-point 
in the chaos of Massachusetts politics. It showed 
how anaemic the Whig party had become, and the 
result wns to give opportunity for the rapid and 
lieal thy growth of the Republican party, enlisting 



REVOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 183 

in its ranks not only anti-slavery Whigs and inde- 
pendent Democrats, but also the speedily disinte- 
grating troops of Know-Nothings. 

The first session of the Thirty-third Congress had 
been so given over to the discussion of the Kansas- 
Nebraska Bill that in the short session there was a 
general disposition to let slavery topics alone. To- 
ward its end, a wide-ranging debate was precipi- 
tated by a bill introduced by Toucey of Connecticut, 
providing for the transfer to federal courts of all 
suits " pending in state courts against federal officers 
and other persons for acts done under any law or 
color of any law of the United States." Its obvious 
though unacknowledged purpose was to bring before 
more friendly courts suits begun in state tribunals 
for damages against persons aiding in the execu- 
tion of the Fugitive Slave Act. Chase forced into 
prominence this effect and probable object of the 
proposed bill, and the debate then called up the 
leaders on both sides of the slavery issue. Wilson, 
newly elected by Know-Nothing votes, on this oc- 
casion discussed slavery for the first time in the 
Senate. Butler again seized the opportunity to nag 
Sumner with questions as to his fidelity to his sena- 
tor's oath, and, not succeeding in provoking a reply, 
declared that he would "not take advantage of the 
infirmity of a man who did not know half his time 
what he was about," — a remark the humor of which 
appealed to every one but himself, for, while Sum- 
ner was proverbially temperate, Butler was often 
under the influence of liquor, and seemed to be un- 



184 CHARLES SUMNER 

duly exhilarated at that very moment. Sumner did 
not get the floor till about midnight ; he then at- 
tacked the bill as " an effort to bolster up the Fugi- 
tive Slave Act," — a measure which was u conceived 
in defiance of the Constitution*' and was u a bare- 
faced subversion of every principle of humanity and 
justice." His motion for its repeal now secured 
nine votes. 

During this session Sumner put himself to no 
little trouble, acting as the representative of John 
A. Andrew, to effect the purchase of the family of 
one of Andrew's colored friends. The children 
were nearly white, and their appearance and pic- 
tures made in the North a great impression of the 
enormities of the slave system. 

Soon after his return to Boston at the close 
of the session, Sumner delivered an address in 
Tremont Temple on u The necessity, practicability, 
and dignity of the anti-slavery enterprise, with 
glances at the special duties of the North." It 
was one of the most comprehensive and per- 
suasive presentations of the anti-slavery cause 
of the whole period of the controversy. There 
was a great demand for it in other cities. For 
the first time, Sumner was called to New York City, 
and delivered this address twice there and again 
in Brooklyn, being received everywhere with much 
enthusiasm. 

It was during the months of this summer that 
Sumner gratified a long-felt wish by making his 
first trip to the West. On his journey he had 



DEVOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 185 

pleasaut visits with Horace Mann, who had become 
president of Antioch College, and with Chase, who 
was entering upon his campaign for the governor- 
ship of Ohio. He went to the home and grave of 
Henry Clay at Lexington, Ky., and in this vicinity 
observed with keen interest the life of slaves on a 
large plantation. He seemed both surprised at find- 
ing them so well-conditioned and contented, and 
saddened at the thought of their being condemned 
to a life of servitude. From St. Louis he traveled 
by steamboat to St. Paul. 

Upon his return to Boston in September from this 
journey on which he had " traversed eleven free 
states and three slave states," he found Massachu- 
setts politics still in turmoil. The anti-slavery fac- 
tion of the Know-Nothing party was ready to join 
with other anti-slavery men, but the other faction 
still persisted in emphasizing nativism as the princi- 
pal issue. The great influence of the Springfield 
Republican and of its eminent editor, Samuel Bowles, 
was cast in favor of the Republican party, and, 
though heretofore not friendly to Sumner, he now 
urged him to take the lead in the campaign as "a 
captain whose moral power has not been weakened 
by participation in the preliminaries of the cam- 
paign, who has not suffered himself to be debauched 
by the local politics of the last twelve months." 
Sumner heeded the call, and spoke to great audi- 
ences in the principal cities of the state, empha- 
sizing in particular the necessity, under existing 
conditions, of a party based upon the principle of 



186 CHARLES SUMNER 

resistance to the extension of slavery. But he also 
gave prominence to a criticism of the principles and 
methods of the Know-Nothing organization, paying 
an eloquent tribute to the services rendered to the 
United States by men of foreign birth, of both high 
and low walks in life, and showing how religions pro- 
scription was out of harmony with the best Ameri- 
can traditions. "A party which, beginning in 
secret, interferes with religious belief, and founds a 
discrimination on the accident of birth, is not the 
party for us." 

Such language was reckless of political expe- 
diency, for Sumner's term in the Senate was ap- 
proaching its end, and the Know-Nothing bod}' in 
Massachusetts was still a power to be reckoned 
with. But in his whole career Sumner never 
swerved from what he believed to be the line of 
truth and duty to further his own fortune or the 
success of a political party. The Know-Nothing 
governor was reelected, for the Boston Whigs still 
refused to recognize that their party was in its last 
throes. The Know-Nothings again secured a major- 
ity in the legislature, and, doubtless in resentment 
at Sumner's unpalatable words in the campaign, it 
was urged that this newly elected body should 
take into its own hands the choice of Sumner's 
successor, which would naturally devolve upon 
the legislators to be chosen a year later. But 
such a step would have been of doubtful con- 
stitutionality and flagrantly out of harmony with 
precedent and current practice, so that the proj- 



REVOLUTION IN MASSACHUSETTS 187 

ect was soon dropped. Who could foresee the 
dark event which within that twelvemonth was to 
bind the heart of Massachusetts as of one man to 
Charles Sumner ! 



CHAPTER X 

U THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS," AND THE BROOKS 

ASSAULT 

At the opening of the new Congress, nearly one- 
fourth of the members were Republicans. They 
could no longer be shut out of committees on the 
ground that they were not members of any healthy 
political party, but their assignments were to posi- 
tions of little responsibility. Greeley wrote in the 
Tribune of December 14, 1 855 : ' ' Mr. Sumner — 
whose reputation as a scholar, orator and statesman 
is not confined to this hemisphere — dangles at the 
tail of two unimportant committees. 1 Such is sla- 
very's confession that she feels the point of his 
spear." 

During the first two months of the session, the 
subject of all-engrossing interest was the contest 
over the speakership. Though the majority of mem- 
bers of the House were now opposed to the Kansas- 
Xebraska Bill and to the administration which had 
fathered it, the various Republican and Know- 
Nothiug elements were so discordant that not until 
the 133d ballot was the contest decided by the elec- 
tion of N". P. Banks, a Massachusetts Republican, 
whose political career had been aided by his tem- 
porary alliance with the nativists. 

1 Pensions and Enrolled Bills. 



"THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS" 189 

Meantime Kansas had become the scene of a yet 
sterner struggle. Missourians had hailed with ac- 
claim the repeal of the prohibition of 1820 in the 
belief that the new territory contiguous to their own 
state would as a matter of course be peopled by 
slaveholders. But it soon became apparent that 
this anticipation was likely to be defeated unless 
they put forth strenuous efforts, for bands of earnest 
settlers were comiug from the Northern states, de- 
termined to turn the decision of i i squatter sover- 
eignty " in favor of freedom. 

The principal leader of the Missourians was Atch- 
ison, who had recently presided over the United 
States Senate ; and the appeal went forth to the 
cotton states for recruits to repel the colonists from 
the North and keep the territory from their grasp. 
But the North was not less alert. Even before the 
Kansas- Nebraska Bill had become a law, Eli Thayer 
of Worcester was devising plaus for assisted emigra- 
tion, which presently took shape in the " New Eng- 
land Emigrant Aid Company," incorporated under 
the laws of Massachusetts, and enlisting in its work 
some of the ablest and bravest men in New England. 
The arrival of its first party of colonists in Kansas 
in the early spring of 1855 aroused the Missourians 
to fierce resentment. At the time of the March 
election, 5,000 of the "border ruffians" swept 
across the state line, terrorized the polling officers 
into receiving their ballots, and elected a legislature 
which would be their fitting representatives. 

To the body thus fraudulently chosen, the free- 



190 CHARLES SUMNER 

state settlers gave no recognition, but proceeded 
to elect a delegate to Congress and delegates to a 
constitutional convention, who met at Topeka and 
drew up a constitution. This was approved by the 
free-state voters, who forthwith elected a legislature 
which applied to Congress for admission as a free 
state under the Topeka Constitution. In all these 
proceedings the pro-slavery settlers and their allies 
had taken no part. But they eagerly sought occa- 
sions for quarrel, and in November 1,200 border 
ruffians surrounded Lawrence, the principal free- 
state town, evidently bent on destroying it. Find- 
ing the townspeople armed with Sharpens rifles, the 
marauders withdrew, but they had not disbanded 
when Congress assembled. The message and the 
later proclamation of the President gave full recog- 
nition to what might fittingly be called the " Mis- 
souri ' ' legislature, and federal troops were placed at 
the service of Governor Shannon. 

The Senate was prompt in calling for documents 
relating to conditions in Kansas, and these gave rise 
to hot debate. ' So violent were the passions aroused 
that, with sure prescience, Sumner declared to a 
friend: "This session will not pass without the 
Senate chamber's becoming the scene of some un- 
paralleled outrage." Wilson took the lead, emphasi- 
zing the part which the Missouri invaders had played 
and the favor and cooperation extended to the pro- 
slavery faction by the administration. In the 

'Said to a brother of Col. T. W. Higginson. Confeynporaries, 
p. 283. 



u 



THE CK1ME AGAINST KANSAS" 191 



House, the issue was joined over the recognition of 
the delegate. Finally it was voted to send a com- 
mission of investigation to the territory. After 
careful study of the situation, the majority reported 
that the territorial legislature was the product of 
fraud and violence, and hence all its acts were void. 

In the Senate, the principal debate on Kansas 
awaited the report from the Committee on Territo- 
ries. It proved to be a divided report, but Douglas, 
for the majority, following the lead of the President, 
laid the blame of all the disorders upon the aggres- 
sions of the Emigrant Aid Company. He presented 
a bill providing for the early organization of a state 
government by a procedure which would distinctly 
confirm the legality of the u Missouri " legislature. 
Sumner straightway denounced this majority report 
for smothering the true issue, and declared that 
both the motive and acts of the Emigrant Aid Com- 
pany were right and lawful. He closed thus : " A 
bad cause is naturally stated on untenable ground. 
You cannot show the misconduct [of the company]. 
Any such allegation will fail ; and you now begin 
your game with loaded dice." These words greatly 
angered Douglas, who upbraided him for "justify- 
ing treason and rebellion," and threatened him with 
the penalties of such heinous conduct. Two days 
later he returned to an attack upon Sumner, giving 
vent to offensive epithets and attributing to him 
"baseness" and " base purposes." 

This discussion of Kansas affairs was but a pre- 
liminary skirmish to the real fight which began in 



192 CHAKLES SUMNER 

the latter part of March, when there came before 
the Senate the two reports and also two separate 
bills, for Seward had introduced one providing for 
the admission of Kansas upon the Topeka Con- 
stitution. Douglas took the lead with a speech full 
of venom and scurrility. All his opponents he 
stigmatized as "black Republicans" and he de- 
nounced his own colleague from Illinois as a traitor, 
worthy of death. The Emigrant Aid Company 
drew from him and his followers the bitterest of 
abuse. Northern leaders were referred to in terms 
of contempt and social ostracism was urged against 
them. Wilson resented these insults and made 
some stinging rejoinders. Seward ignored such 
vulgar attacks j although his speech arraigned the 
President as mainly responsible for the disorders in 
Kansas, it did not grapple with the main issue. 
Sumner secured the floor for the 19th of May (1856). 
Two days before he was to speak, he wrote to Theo- 
dore Parker : " Alas ! the tyranny over us is com- 
plete. Will the people submit ? When you read 
this, I shall be saying to the Senate, 'They will 
not ! y Would that I had your strength ! But I 
shall pronounce the most thorough philippic ever 
uttered in a legislative body." 

Meantime, in far-away Kansas veritable civil war 
had begun. Recruits had been mustered even from 
Alabama and South Carolina. At the call of a 
United States marshal, ostensibly to aid in execu- 
ting process on a free-state man, these, together with 
hundreds of Missourians, had gathered, and, at the 



"THE CKIME AGAINST KANSAS" 193 

moment when Sumner began his speech, they had 
for several days been marauding in the vicinity of 
Lawrence. Their lines kept drawing closer. On 
the morning of the day after Sumner had finished 
depicting "the crime against Kansas," this armed 
mob was in position upon the bluffs which com- 
manded the town and before the sun had set, al- 
though the arrest had been made without resistance, 
the ruffians had stormed the place, smashed printing- 
presses, fired the hotel of the Emigrant Aid Com- 
pany, and plundered and burned the townspeople's 
homes. 

When Sumner began his speech, despite the in- 
tensity of the heat, the Senate galleries and adjoin- 
ing rooms were thronged. There was a tenseness 
of anticipation in the air. It was felt that hitherto 
the Northern speakers had shown too much meek- 
ness. Sumner had been the man most viciously 
assailed, and it was known that he would now reply 
with utter fearlessness and would speak the naked 
truth as he saw it. And his text was at hand, 
for every one in Washington believed that blood 
would soon be shed in Kansas, and before night it 
was known that Lawrence lay at the mercy of the 
mob. 

In opening his speech Sumner presented a glow- 
ing picture of the beauties of the new aspirant for 
statehood. He then declared that "the crime 
against Kansas" — the phrase in which he epito- 
mized his own speech — was aggravated by the 
motive, which was " the rape of a virgin territory, 



194 CHARLES SUMNER 

compelling it to the hateful embrace of slavery, 
. . . traceable to a depraved desire for a new 
slave state, hideous offspring of such a crime, in 
the hope of adding to the power of slavery in the 
national government, . . . force being openly 
employed in compelling Kansas to this pollution." 
He denounced the Kansas-Nebraska Bill as "in 
every respect a swindle, . . . the only word 
which could adequately express the mingled mean- 
ness and wickedness of the cheat. ' ' He enumerated 
the deeds of violence which had been committed in 
Kansas ; he laid stress upon the ways in which the 
President and his administration had abetted them, 
characterizing as an "apology imbecile" Pierce's 
disclaimer of power to act, and spoke of the other 
excuses for the crime as " the apology tyrannical, the 
apology absurd, and the apology infamous." . . . 
"Tyranny, imbecility, absurdity and infamy all 
unite, like the weird sisters, to dance about this 
crime." He told of Atchison's having, "like 
Cataline, stalked into this chamber, reeking with 
conspiracy," where he had found "a senator 
[Butler] who had not hesitated to appear as his 
open compurgator." He defended the Emigrant 
Aid Compauy with great vigor, and closed his re- 
marks of the first day with bold words of praise for 
Massachusetts, the leader in the war of the Revolu- 
tion, "to which she contributed troops in larger 
numbers than any other state, and larger than all 
the slave states together," just as in the present 
struggle "she contributes . . . more of that 



"THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS" 195 

divine spark by which opinions are quickened 
into life than is contributed by any other state, 
or by all the slave states together, while her 
annual productive industry exceeds in value three 
times the whole vaunted cotton crop of the whole 
South." 

In the course of his remarks he turned his atten- 
tion to the senators " who had raised themselves to 
eminence on this floor in the championship of 
human wrongs : I mean the senator from South 
Carolina [Butler] and the senator from Illinois 
[Douglas], who, though unlike as Don Quixote and 
Sancho Panza, yet, like this couple, sally forth to- 
gether in the same adventure." "The senator 
from South Carolina has read many books of 
chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, 
with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course 
he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his 
vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always 
lovely to him ; though polluted in the sight of the 
world, is chaste in his sight. I mean the harlot, 
Slavery. For her his tongue is always profuse in 
words. ... If the slave states cannot en- 
joy . . . the full power in the national territo- 
ries to compel fellow men to unpaid toil, to separate 
husband and wife, and to sell lirtle children at the 
auction block, — then, sir, the chivalric senator will 
conduct the state of South Carolina out of the 
Union ! Heroic knight ! Exalted senator ! a sec- 
ond Moses come for a second exodus ! 9i He then 
vindicated the Republican party against Butler's 



196 CHARLES SUMNER 

charge of sectionalism, declaring: "It is in no 
just sense sectional, but, more than any other 
party, national ; and ... it now goes forth to 
dislodge from the high places that tyrannical sec- 
tionalism of which the senator from South Carolina 
is one of the maddest zealots." 

Of Douglas he said : u As the senator from South 
Carolina is the Don Quixote, so the senator from 
Illinois is the squire of slavery, its very Sancho 
Panza, ready to do its humiliating offices. This 
senator in his labored address, vindicating his 
labored report, — piling one mass of elaborate error 
upon another mass, — constrained himself, as you 
will remember, to unwonted decencies of speech." 
Sumner then proceeded to declare that while with 
his boastful swagger he might convulse the country 
with civil feud, Douglas could not enforce obedience 
to the tyrannical usurpation in Kansas. 

While Sumner was speaking, the pro-slavery 
senators at first feigned indifference, and kept up so 
much conversation and laughter among themselves 
that they had to be called to order. At the end of 
three hours, Sumner stopped; he concluded his 
speech in two hours on the following day. He 
strongly urged that Kansas be admitted as a state 
upon the Topeka Constitution. He denounced 
Butler, a judge and chairman of the Judiciary 
Committee of the Senate, for proposing that a war- 
rant be issued for Sharpe's rifles: — "to compass 
the wretched purposes of a wretched cause, he thus 
purposes to trample on one of the plainest pro- 



"THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS" 197 

visions of constitutional liberty." Later, referring 
to Butler's angry outbreaks at the mere suggestion 
of the admission of Kansas as a free state, Sumner 
said: "With incoherent phrase [he] discharges 
the loose expectoration of his speech now upon her 
representative, and then upon her people. . . . 
There was no possible deviation from truth which 
he did not make, with so much passion, I gladly 
add, as to save him from the suspicion of inten- 
tional aberration. ... He shows an incapacity 
for accuracy, whether in stating the Constitution, 
or in stating the law, whether in details of statistics 
or diversions of scholarship. He cannot ope his 
mouth but out there flies a blunder." Referring to 
Butler's contempt for Kansas and pride in his own 
state, Sumner said: "South Carolina counts by 
centuries where Kansas counts by years. But a 
beneficent example may be born in a day. . . . 
Were the whole history of South Carolina blotted 
out of existence, from its very beginning to the day 
of the last election of the senator to his present 
seat on this floor, civilization might lose — I do not 
say how little, but surely less than it has already 
gained by the example of Kansas in that valiant 
struggle against oppression, and in the develop- 
ment of a new science of emigration. . . . 
Throughout this infant territory there is more of 
educated talent in proportion to its inhabitants 
than in his vaunted ' state.' Ah, sir, I tell you 
that Kansas, welcomed as a free state, i a ministering 
angel shall be ' to the republic, when South Caro- 



198 CHARLES STJMNEK 

lina, in the cloak of darkness which she hugs, k lies 
howling.' " 

Of Mason he spoke as one who, " as author of the 
Fugitive Slave Bill, had associated himself with a 
special act of inhumanity and tyranny. " " He holds 
the commission of Virginia, — of that other Virginia 
from which Washington and Jefferson avert their 
faces, where human beings are bred as cattle for the 
shambles, and a dungeon rewards the pious matron 
who teaches children to relieve their bondage by 
reading the Book of Life. It is proper that such 
a senator, representing such a state, should rail 
against free Kansas." 

Watchful as had been his opponents for any op- 
portunity against him, not once in the whole course 
of his speech was Sumner called to order. His 
eloquence and intense earnestness made a tre- 
mendous impression, and he was acclaimed as the 
peer of the greatest orators and statesmen of Eng- 
land and America. But Douglas and Mason 
writhed under the excoriation he had administered. 
Douglas spoke of the " depths of malignity that 
issued from every sentence' 7 ; he affected to be 
shocked by the " lasciviousness and obscenity" of 
Sumner's speech, and ridiculed him for " practic- 
ing his speech every night before the glass with a 
negro boy to hold the candle and watch the 
gestures," — a charge to which Sumner's scorching- 
rejoinder promptly gave the lie. But what rankled 
most was Sumner's denunciation of the Kansas- 
Nebraska Bill as "in every respect a swindle." 



"THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS" 190 

"Is it his object," cried Douglas, " to provoke 
some of us to kick him as we would a dog in the 
street, that he may get sympathy upon his just 
chastisement?"— words which took ou a dark sig- 
nificance from the events of the next few hours. 

Angry censure came from others as well. Mason 
denounced Sumner as "a cunning artificer or 
forger, who knows no other use of truth than to 
give currency to falsehood," and deplored the 
political necessity of tolerating him in the Senate, 
whereas elsewhere he would not be recognized " as 
possessing manhood in auy form" ; his very 
presence would be "dishonor" and " the touch of 
his hand would be a disgrace." To such low per- 
sonalities Sumner would doubtless have turned a 
deaf ear, had he not been convinced that patience 
in face of the Southerners' swaggering arrogance 
had ceased to be a virtue. He fronted Douglas 
with scorn ; advancing toward him, and pointing 
his finger defiantly at him, he said : 

" Let the senator remember hereafter that the 
bowie-knife and bludgeon are not proper emblems 
of senatorial debate. Let him remember that the 
swagger of Bob Acres and the ferocity of the Malay 
cannot add to the dignity of this body. . . . 
I will not descend to things that dropped so natur- 
ally from his tongue. I only brand them to his face 
as false. I say also to that senator — and I wish him 
to bear it in mind— that no person with the upright 
form of man can be allowed " (hesitation). 

Douglas: "Say it." 



200 CHARLES SUMNER 

Sumuer : u I will say it. No person with the up- 
right form of man can be allowed without violation 
of all decency, to switch out from his tongue the 
perpetual stench of offensive personality. Sir, that 
is not a proper weapon of debate, at least on this 
floor. The noisome, squat and nameless animal, to 
which I refer, is not the proper model for an Amer- 
ican senator. AVill the senator from Illinois take 
notice?" 

Douglas: "I will, and so will not imitate you, 



sir. 



11 



Sumner : " I did not hear the senator." 

Douglas: "I said, if that be the case, I would 
certainly never imitate you in that capacity, recog- 
nizing the force of the illustration." 

Sumner: "Mr. President, again the senator 
switches his tongue, and again he fills the senate 
with its offensive odor. I pass from the senator 
from Illinois. 

" There was still another — the senator from Vir- 
ginia — who is now also in my eye. That senator 
said nothing of argument, and therefore there is 
nothing of that for response. I simply say to him 
that hard words are not arguments, frowns are not 
reasons, nor do scowls belong to the proper arsenal 
of parliamentary debate. The senator has not for- 
gotten that on a former occasion I did something to 
exhibit the plantation manners which he displays." J 

1 In passing judgment upon the mode of speech which Sum- 
ner allowed himself in this debate, it must be remembered that 
he had heretofore submitted to the most galling epithets, and 



"THE CEIME AGAINST KANSAS 7 ' 201 

Among Sumner's friends there was not a little ap- 
prehension as to the consequences to which such a 
speech might lead. Douglas's words had seemed to 
hint at personal violence, and after the session 
Wilson and one or two others told Sumner that they 
were going home with him. When Sumner caught 
their meaning, he immediately dismissed their sug- 
gestion of acting as his body-guard. "None of 
that, Wilson," said he. Now, as at other critical 
junctures, he showed himself almost fatalistically 
insensible to fear, and continued to walk alone about 
the streets of the capital. 1 

that unbridled license had repeatedly been used by Douglas and 
his allies in assailing the leaders of the North. That these 
masters of senatorial billingsgate had now met with " majestic, 
elegant and crushing " rebuke from Sumner gave profound sat- 
isfaction and encouragement to anti-slavery men throughout the 
country. Said Parker to Sumner, after his speech : '' You had 
all three of them at once on the point of your spear." Sum- 
ner's own vindication of his severity of speech on such occasions 
he stated thus to a friend : " There is a time for everything ; 
and when crime and criminals are thrust before us, they are to 
be met by all the energies that God has given us, by argument, 
scorn and denunciation. The whole arsenal of God is ours ; 
and I will not renounce one of its weapons, — not one. That is 
my opinion, formed in experience and tried by tranquil medi- 
tation." Letters of hearty congratulation and appreciation 
came pouring in upon him. The speech was issued in enor- 
mous editions; it is estimated that within two months of its de- 
livery a million copies had been distributed. It was reprinted 
in England, and translated into Welsh and German. 

1 " I don't believe he knew what fear was. Perhaps it detracts 
from his credit that he didn't know what fear was. Richard 
Dana said once, describing him : ' He is a cat without smellers.' 
That is he has none of the delicate tests that, as he passes along, 
tell him what he touches. He wanted that timidity which rec- 
ognizes the opposition to him, and so he passed bravely on." 
— Wendell Phillips, oration reported in Boston Daily Advertiser, 
March 13, 1877. 



202 CHARLES SUMNER 

But meantime a self-constituted champion of the 
South was nerving himself to avenge what he deemed 
the insults that had been heaped upon her. Preston 
S. Brooks had come to Congress in 1853 from an up- 
state district of South Carolina. In the war with 
Mexico he had headed a company of volunteers, but 
illness had prevented his seeing active service. In 
the House he had been orderly in his conduct, had 
once helped stop a personal encounter between mem- 
bers, and had introduced a resolution against the 
bringing of concealed weapons. He was considered 
less of a " fire-eater*' than many of his Southern 
colleagues, and was on quite friendly terms with 
some Northern members. Brooks, who was later 
referred to as Butler's " nephew " and " near kins- 
man," was the son of the senator's cousin. He had 
heard a part of Sumner's speech on the first day, 
and resented what he denounced as insults to his 
kinsman and to his state. From his own testimony 
it seems probable that his real grievance was Sum- 
ner's attack upon "the harlot, Slavery," and the 
devotion which she received from Southern leaders, 
and that others, of more brutal mind than he, urged 
him on as the champion of his outraged section, 
working upon his relationship to Butler as affording 
both the natural reason why he should act and a 
possible defense in case of court proceedings. 
Brooks complained of Sumner's speech the first day ; 
the second day, comments of colleagues and in so- 
cial circles stung him to more definite thoughts of 
vengeance. On the following day, he broached the 



"THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS" 203 

matter which was burdening his mind to Edmund- 
son of Virginia, laying stress, so the latter said, 
upon Sumner's characterization of South Carolina as 
" disgracefully impotent during the Revolution, and 
still more so on account of slavery." Brooks urged 
his colleague to be present as a friend, but Edmund- 
son's saying that he had only a " little briar stick " 
with him showed that he understood Brooks really 
wished him to be prepared for active assistance. 
They stalked their prey in the Capitol and through 
its grounds, but did not find him. The following 
day, Edmundson came upon Brooks lying in wait for 
Sumner at the entrance to the Capitol grounds, with 
the intention of attacking him there, or, in case he 
drove to the Capitol, of passing up the steps and ac- 
costing him at the East Front, on his way to the 
Senate. Edmundson dissuaded him from this course, 
lest the exertion of hurrying up the steps should un- 
fit him for a contest with Sumner, whom both these 
ruffians thought to be Brooks' s superior in strength. 
Accordingly Brooks went to the Senate chamber, 
where his companion joined him. While a eulogy 
was being pronounced upon a deceased member, 
Brooks stood in the aisle a few feet from Sumner's 
chair. Upon the Senate's adjournment, most of the 
members left the chamber, Brooks taking a vacated 
seat, separated by two from the one where Sumner 
was sitting. The presence of a woman in the gal- 
lery embarrassed Brooks's sense of gallantry. He 
asked one of the attendants to get her to leave, and 
when this supposedly whimsical request was not 



204 CHAKLES SUMNER 

complied with, lie went out to ask Edmund- 
sou's advice as to whether it would not be best 
to send in his card to Sumner. He was dis- 
suaded on the ground that Sumner would prob- 
ably not leave his work but would summon him to 
his desk. 

Free of interruptions, Sumner had settled to his 
writing, drawing his chair up close to the desk over 
which he was bent, absorbed in his work. A chiv- 
alrous knight might never again hope to have his 
victim more completely at his mercy, for the desk, 
firmly fastened to the floor, pinioned him ; until he 
should have time to push back his chair, it would 
be impossible for him to rise. 

Suddenly Sumner heard his name called. Look- 
ing up, he saw a tall, dark-faced stranger, who, 
without giving his name, said : "I have read your 
speech over twice carefully ; it is a libel on South 
Carolina and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine " 
—and down upon the head of the defenseless man 
crashed a blow from a heavy gutta-percha cane. 
Half-stunned, Sumner struggled to rise ; the blows 
still continued, but the desk held him, till he 
wrenched it from its iron fastenings. As he 
staggered toward his assailant. Brooks seized him 
by the collar and still rained blows at his head. 
The cane broke, but the furious blows did not cease 
till Sumner sank bleeding to the floor. 

The Senate chamber was almost empty at the 
time. So swiftly and without warning had the 
assault been made that not till Sumner was falling 



"THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS" 205 

did any one reach his side. Surprise and lack of 
presence of mind hindered some, but there were 
others who deliberately held back. Toombs, stand- 
ing near by, saw the first blow and watched the 
assault with approval. Keitt, Brooks's colleague, 
who had been awaiting his action, immediately 
rushed forward, brandishing a cane and with hand 
on pistol, shouting, "Let them alone!" He even 
threatened the venerable Senator Crittenden, who 
was trying to get between the assailant and his 
victim. Slidell and Douglas were in the anteroom, 
when the shout was heard that some one was as- 
saulting Sumner. Slidell, who years before had 
assured Sumner of his grateful appreciation of his 
"chivalrous and zealous advocacy" in defense of 
his brother, now "felt no emotion at hearing the 
remark. I remained very quietly in my seat. . . . 
I have no association of relations of any kind with 
Mr. Sumner. ... I did not think it necessary 
to express my sympathy or make any advances to- 
ward him." Despite his own menacing words, 
Douglas denied that he had had the slightest sus- 
picion that any violence was to be offered Sumner ; 
he acknowledged that his first impulse had been 
"to help put an end to the affray ; but it occurred 
to my mind in an instant that if I came into the 
hall my motives would be misconstrued, and I sat 
down again." 

As friends gathered about the stricken senator, it 
was thought that he could not survive. He was 
bruised upon the face, arms and shoulders, while 



206 CHAKLES SUMNEK 

blood flowed copiously from two long wounds, deep 
and very ragged, on the back of his head, which 
cut to the bone and down under the scalp. But for 
his heavy mass of hair, instant death would proba- 
bly have resulted from such blows. Wilson took 
the half- conscious man to his lodgings. With un- 
daunted spirit, he declared that he would renew the 
conflict with slavery as soon as he could return to 
his post. But the next day, for the first time since 
he had entered the Senate, the seat of Charles Sum- 
ner was vacant. 

When the Senate convened, by previous arrange- 
ment among the Eepublicans, Wilson made a brief 
statement of what had occurred. There was a 
pause. It had been hoped that some member of 
the majority would make a motion for a committee 
of investigation, but none of them stirred. As the 
presiding officer was about to proceed to the regular 
business of the day, Seward moved that a com- 
mittee of inquiry be chosen. No objection was in- 
terposed, and it was passed without debate, after 
being amended, however, so that the committee 
should be chosen by the Senate. Had ordinary 
precedent been followed, the presiding officer would 
have named Seward chairman of the committee and 
have given fair representation to the minority, but 
the Senate proceeded to elect a committee made up 
exclusively of Democrats. Five days later this 
committee submitted a terse report, which, without 
comment upon the nature of the outrage, merely 
declared that the assault constituted a breach of the 



"THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS" 207 

privileges of the Senate, but that it lay outside the 
Semite's jurisdiction and was punishable only by 
the House of which Brooks was a member. The 
committee's recommendation that their report and 
affidavits be transmitted to the House was im- 
mediately adopted by the Senate. 

Meantime, in the House, Clingman of North 
Carolina had tried to block a motion of inquiry by 
making the point that there was no question of 
privilege, as the assault was not committed on a 
member of the House. But the Speaker ruled 
against him, and the resolution was passed by a 
vote of about three to two. The Speaker then ap- 
pointed a committee consisting of three Northern 
Eepublicaus and two Southern Democrats. After 
a week spent in taking testimony and deliberating, 
the committee by a vote of three to two declared 
Brooks guilty of an assault and of disorderly be- 
havior and recommended his expulsion and the 
censure of Edmuudson and Keitt. The two South- 
ern members dissented in a u coarse tissue of 
sophistry," insisting that the House had no juris- 
diction, since the assault was not committed on a 
member of the House nor while the House was in 
session. 

Though the Senate resolution had been passed 
without debate, the subject came before that body 
some days later through personal explanations which 
several of the members sought to make as to allega- 
tions contained in the affidavits. Toombs's frank 
avowal of his approval of the assault called from 



208 CHARLES SUMXER 

Wade the ringing challenge : "If the principle now 
announced ['an assassiu-like, cowardly attack upon 
a man unarmed '] is to prevail, let us come armed for 
the combat ; and although you are four to one, I am 
here to meet you. God knows a man can die in no 
better cause than in vindicating the rights of de- 
bate on this floor." Wilson declared: "Mr. Sum- 
ner was stricken down on this floor by a brutal, 

murderous, and cowardly assault " "You are 

a liar!" shouted Butler, starting forward as if to 
attack him, but other senators interposed and per- 
suaded him to withdraw his words. 

A fortnight later, however, in the debate on the 
Kansas bill, Butler recurred to Sumner's speech, 
declaring that, had he been present, he would not 
have submitted to such insults. He expressed ap- 
proval of all of Brooks's conduct; professed to be- 
lieve that Sumner was little hurt and now was 
"shamming"; referred to him as a "criminal 
aggressor," a "degenerate son of Massachusetts," 
like Thersites in "deserving what that brawler re- 
ceived from the hands of the gallant Ulysses " ; and 
implied that Sumner would have had far less social 
currency, had not he (Butler) at the first maintained 
intercourse with him. Wilson ridiculed as a "piny- 
wood doctrine" this assumption of social superi- 
ority, and proceeded by authoritative quotations 
from Butler's speeches to prove that for a long time 
he had been the aggressor, nagging Sumner with 
the most insulting epithets and in most offensive 
manner. To this Butler made a rather shamefaced 



"THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS" 209 

reply. Seward, who had been strangely reluctant 
to speak, even now seemed unduly conciliatory in 
compliments to the South j but he spoke most feel- 
ingly of Sumner as "a cherished personal friend 
and political associate" and declared with sure 
prophecy : " The blows that fell on the head of the 
senator from Massachusetts have done more for the 
cause of human freedom in Kansas and in the terri- 
tories of the United States than all the eloquence 
. . . which has resounded in these halls from 
the days when Bufus Kiug asserted that cause in 
this chamber, and when John Quincy Adams de- 
fended it in the other house, until the present 
hour." 

The promise of the first few days that Sumner 
would soon be back in his seat was not fulfilled. 
Violent pain and fever came on. One of his wounds 
had to be opened, and for a few days his con- 
dition was critical. After he had rallied a little, he 
was taken to the country, but the wound still re- 
fused to heal, and he complained of dull feelings in 
his head which made him fear the approach of 
paralysis. He was in Washington again for a few 
days in July, and many anti-slavery men in 
Congress and members of the diplomatic corps 
called to inquire for him, but no call or word of 
sympathy came from adherents of the administra- 
tion with the exception of Cass. Seven weeks after 
the assault he went to Philadelphia, to put himself 
in the care of an eminent physician. 
In these days of Sumner's prostration, the national 



210 CHAELES SUMNER 

conventions were held. In the Republican assem- 
bly not a few votes were cast, especially by New 
York delegates, for Suinuer as nominee for the vice- 
presidency. It was said that his nomination was 
prevented only by the Massachusetts delegation 
formally withdrawing his name. 

On the very day that Sumner left Wash- 
ington, occurred Brooks's trial in the circuit 
court of the District of Columbia on the charge of 
assault. He made no denial, but declared he 
had acted as would a husband avenging his out- 
raged honor. The court imposed on him no 
other penalty than the trifling fine of three hundred 
dollars. 

Two days later began the debate in the House on 
the report of the committee on the assault. Most of 
the speakers laid chief stress on the contention that 
the House had no jurisdiction. But others did not 
hesitate to justify the assault in every respect, No 
attention was paid to Butler's grievance. Espe- 
cially forward in praising Brooks's championship 
of the South were Clingmau, who maintained "the 
liberty of the cudgel," and Savage of Tennessee, 
who declared that Brooks, "instead of deserving 
punishment, merited the highest commendation," 
and that Sumner " did not get a lick more than he 
deserved." Most impressive was the speech of 
Giddings, himself a hero of the struggle for free 
speech in the House. The vote stood one hun- 
dred and twenty-one to ninety-five in favor of 
expulsion, thus falling far short of the requisite two- 



"THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS" 211 

thirds. After the vote had been declared, Brooks 
obtained the floor and made a braggart's speech. 
He showed with disgusting clearness the deliber- 
ation with which the assault was planned, explaining 
his choice of a cane rather than a whip, so that he 
might get the firmer grip ; he implied that he was 
provided with some deadly weapon for use in case 
Sumner had wrenched the cane away from him. 
He referred in insulting terms to anti-slavery mem- 
bers, speaking of Comins, with whom he had previ- 
ously sought association, as a " poltroon and a puppy, 
. . . a cock that crows and won't fight, despised 
by the hens and even by the pullets." By her reso- 
lutions condemning the attack, he declared that 
Massachusetts had " given additional proof that she 
neither comprehends the theory of our government 
nor is loyal to its authority." To those who had 
voted for his expulsion he said that "for all future 
time his self-respect required that he should pass them 
as straDgers." He thereupon announced his resig- 
nation, and strode from the chamber, to be over- 
whelmed at its door by the kisses and embraces of 
Southern women. The resolution of censure upon 
Edmundson was defeated, largely on the ground 
that he was not present at the assault. Keitt was 
censured by a vote of one hundred and ninety-six 
to ninety-six. He thereupon made a brutal speech, 
in which he declared that Brooks "redressed a 
wrong to his blood and his state and he did it in 
a fair and manly way." He, too, resigned. And 
within three weeks each of these heroes had been 



212 CHAELES SUMNER 

vindicated by reelection to bis seat by a practically 
unanimous vote. 1 

Brooks challenged a Massachusetts member to a 
duel for denouncing the assault "in the name of 
that fair play which bullies and prize-fighters re- 
spect," but later declined to go to the place in 
Canada selected for the combat. Wilson's con- 
demnation of the affair as "brutal, murderous and 
cowardly" called forth a challenge. Wilson con- 
temptuously declined to fight a duel with him, but 
gave it to be understood that he should be prepared 
to defend himself. Brooks continued to breathe 
out threatening*, but men who called him coward, 
ruffian and bully went unscathed, for Brooks as- 
sumed the role of avenger only when his victim was 
unarmed and pinioned. 

The extended account which has been given of 
this assault would be entirely disproportionate, 
were it not for the fact that throughout the slave 
states Brooks's act received ardent approval as a 
valiant deed for the honor of the South. "Good 
in conception, better in execution, and best of all in 
consequences," was the comment of the Richmond 
Enquirer, and it called for like treatment in the case 
of other Northerners who should dare "slander the 



1 [n a speech at a banquet <jiven in his honor, Brooks declared 
himself, in this deed, "the type anil representative of the en- 
tire South." In an address issued to his constituents, he ur^ed 
them to elect him with unanimity, "if I have represented you 
faithfully." And in his entire district only six votes were cast 
against him. 



"THE CEIME AGAINST KANSAS" 213 

South." 1 Sinims, the most eminent Southern man 
of letters, justified the attack, and even approved 
it in New York in words which deeply incensed his 
hearers. Jefferson Davis wrote to Brooks, com- 
mending both his act and his character. He was 
hailed as the representative of Southern chivalry 
and presented a gold-headed cane by the students 
of the University of Virginia, the greatest centre of 
culture in the South, while a dozen canes and other 
evidences of admiration came from various places 
in the slave states. 

Throughout the North there was absolute una- 
nimity in condemning the assault. It was every- 
where recognized as an attack upon constitutional 
liberty, evidencing a determination to suppress free 
speech, just as at the very same time other ruffians 
were suppressing free speech and a free ballot in 
Kansas. The legislatures of Massachusetts, Connec- 
ticut, Ehode Island and Vermont passed stinging 
resolutions, which were presented in Congress. In 
many of the great cities of the North public meetings 
of protest were attended by thousands and addressed 
by such men as Henry Ward Beecher, William 
Cullen By rant, William M. Evarts, Francis Way- 
land, E. Eockwood Hoar, Longfellow and Quincy, 
Holmes and Emerson. At the formal recommenda- 

1 The Charleston Mercury of July 21, 1856, commented on 
the assault : " The whole affair has been most oppor- 
tune. ... He [Brooks] has from the first conducted him- 
self with good taste, good judgment, and good spirit." Sum- 
ner " is dead in the esteem of every man not a poltroon. North 
or South," 



214 CHARLES SUMNER 

tion of the governor of Massachusetts, a resolution 
was introduced in the legislature that the common- 
wealth defray the expenses of Sumner's illness, and 
a popular subscription was started to provide a 
testimonial in recognition of his championship of 
freedom in the Senate. Later this desire to show 
popular approval led to the proposal that Sumner 
be nominated for governor, with the expectation 
that he would serve only from January till March 
and then resign. But Sumner vetoed all three pro- 
posals, requesting that the contributions be devoted 
to the cause of freedom in Kansas. From all sides 
came expressions of sympathy and appreciation of 
his service. As many as 350 letters of such import 
were received within six weeks of the assault. It 
has been suggested that these would afford an in- 
teresting contrast, both as to their spirit and the 
character of their writers, if they could be placed 
in comparison with the letters of the same period 
received by Brooks, Butler and Douglas. Aca- 
demic recognition was shown in the bestowal upon 
Sumner of the degree of LL. D. by both Amherst 
and Yale, but not till three years later by his alma 
mater. Tributes of sympathy and affection came 
from abroad, where the significance of the Brooks 
assault was clearly seen by keen observers. " That 
outrage," said Cornewall Lewis, "is no proof of 
brutal manners or low morality in America ; it is 
the first blow in a civil war." ! 
In search of health, Sumner went first to the 
J Morley, Life of Gladstone, Vol, I, p. 441. 



"THE CRIME AGAINST KANSAS" 215 

shore and then to the mountains, but the gains 
were slow and slight. He was much troubled by 
insomnia, by a feeling of weight on the brain, and 
by throbbing pains in his head. Friends and 
physicians noted with apprehension his pallor, his 
tottering steps and his exhaustion even from slight 
effort. His letters frequently reveal a dread of 
" the possibility of life with shattered nerves and 
perhaps with a brain that has lost its powers." 

As the time of the national election approached, 
Sumner, who was then under treatment in Phila- 
delphia, determined to return to Boston to vote for 
Fremont. Forthwith came a committee of citizens, 
tendering a banquet. This he declined, but was 
prevailed upon to accept a public reception, which 
was carried out in such manner as to make it a 
most impressive tribute of sympathy, appreciation 
and admiration. Sumner came first to Longfellow's 
home. The following day he went to Brookline ; 
here he was met by distinguished citizens and 
escorted to the Boston line, where waited a "caval- 
cade" of nearly 700 citizens as an escort. He was 
presented to the mayor and was most feelingly 
greeted by him and by the venerable Josiah Quincy. 
He entered the carriage, which was drawn by six 
gray horses, and the procession, nearly half a mile 
in length, advanced to the front of the State House. 
The streets were decorated with banners, festoons 
and arches ; flags were flying and bouquets were 
thrown into his carriage. The streets leading to 
the State House were thronged with people. Here 



216 CHARLES SUMXER 

the senator was presented to the governor of the 
commonwealth, who welcomed the ''eloquent 
orator, the accomplished scholar, and the acknowl- 
edged statesman, . . . the earnest friend of suf- 
fering humanity and of every good cause, . . . 
the successful defender of the honor and integrity 
of Massachusetts." Sumner started to reply, but 
his strength was already overtaxed, and after a few 
words of appreciation, he was forced to abandon 
the effort. After nine cheers from the thronging 
thousands, Sumner was escorted to his own home, 
near at hand, where his mother awaited him. The 
street before the house was soon packed, and again 
and again mother and son had to appear at the 
window. Yet in all the excitement and high- 
wrought feeling of that day there was no mention of 
the assailant, no hint of vengeance. 

In the ensuing election Fremont carried Massa- 
chusetts by a majority of 50,000; the Republican 
candidate was reelected to Congress, and the Re- 
publicans secured a majority in the state legislature. 
At the opening of Congress the Republicans carried 
themselves with confidence born of the knowledge 
that they had elected a majority of the next House. 
Sumner was eager to get back to his post. Sena- 
torial service, so unattractive to him at first, now 
kindled his most intense zeal. To Giddings he had 
written, shortly before Congress adjourned : "For 
three weeks of this session I would have given three 
years of any future public life." Undaunted by all 
his past perils and sufferings, he now wrote to 



"THE CEIME AGAINST KANSAS" 217 

Whittier : "I long to speak and liberate my soul. 
If I am able to speak as I desire, I lliink tliat I 
shall be shot. Very well, I am content. The 
cause will live." 1 

"When the Massachusetts legislature convened, it 
immediately took up the election of senator. In 
the House there were three hundred and thirty- 
three votes for Sumner to twelve for all others, 
while in the Senate every vote was cast for him. 
Yet six years before, his election had been effected 
by a single vote at the end of the longest deadlock 
in the history of the commonwealth, and a year later 
the journals of the Whig party— now dead— had 
called upon him to resign, taunting him with lack 
of any popular support. As R. H. Dana, Jr., 
wrote : " No one can now say that you have not a 
constituency behind you. Where is there a senator 
who holds by such a tenure ? " 

But his progress toward recovery was tediously 
slow.' 2 At the opening of Congress he was quite un- 

1 December 20, 1856. 

2 While he was convalescing at his home in Boston, James 
Freeman Clarke called one day, and found him conversing with 
three gentlemen. "He introduced one of them to me as Cap- 
tain John Brown of Ossawatomie. It was the first time I had 
ever seen John Brown. They were speaking of this assault by 
Preston Brooks, and Mr. Sumner said : ' The coat I had on 
at the time is hanging in that closet. Its collar is stiff with 
blood. You can see it, if you please, Captain.' John Brown 
arose, went to the closet, slowly opened the door, carefully took 
down the coat, and looked at it for a few minutes with the 
reverence with which a Roman Catholic regards the relics of a 
saint. It may be the sight of that garment caused him to feel 
a still deeper abhorrence of slavery and to take a stronger 
resolution to attack it in its strongholds. So the blood of the 



218 CHARLES SUMNER 

able to attend its sessions. Friends begged him to 
take no risks, and earnestly dissuaded him from 
any thought of resigning, urging that he go to 
Europe and seek restoration of his health. He 
reached Washington a week before the end of the 
session, and on February 26th he was again in his 
seat, vacant since the 22d of May. From Re- 
publicans he received a cordial welcome, but Demo- 
crats gave him no sign of recognition. Sumner 
found himself unable to stand the strain of the ses- 
sions. He had come to Washington to cast his vote 
in favor of reducing the tariff rates of 1846 on raw 
materials, especially on wool, a modification then 
strongly urged by the manufacturers of New Eng- 
land. He was summoned when votes were to be 
taken, and at two stages his vote was decisive. He 
was sworn in for his second term March 4, 1857, 
and was assigned to the Committee on Territories, 
under the chairmanship of Douglas. Wilson nomi- 
nated him for the Committee on Foreign Relations, 
for which he had preeminent qualifications, but this 
nomination was defeated by the action of Seward, 
who wanted this position for himself. 

On the 7th of March, Sumner sailed for France, 
honored by a salute of thirty-one guns, fired by the 
Young Men's Republican Club. It was the seventh 
anniversary of Webster's Seventh of March Speech, 



martyrs is the seed of the church." — Memorial and Biographical 
Sketches, p. 102. This incident, though narrated with such 
particularity, is helieved to be apocryphal by Mr. A. B. John- 
son, who was Sumner's private secretary. 



"THE CEIME AGAINST KANSAS" 219 

and on that morning was published the Supreme 
Court's decision in the Dred Scott case. 

Meantime Brooks had resumed his seat with 
triumphant air. He took part in the debates early 
in the following session ; but in January he died 
very suddenly of an acute inflammation of the throat. 
In the House friends spoke in his praise ; but only 
Savage ventured to refer to the one deed by which 
he is now remembered, assigning to Bruoks a place 
in history by the side of Brutus. At this many of 
the Eepublican members withdrew from the hall. 
Brooks's remains were accorded a public funeral in 
South Carolina with civic and military honors. 
Upon his monument in the village of his birth is 
carved the following epitaph, — the closing sentences 
of the eulogy pronounced upon him in Congress by 
his accomplice, Keitt : "Ever able, manly, just, 
and heroic, illustrating true patriotism by devotion 
to his country, the whole South unites with his 
bereaved family in deploring his untimely end. 
4 Earth has never pillowed upon her bosom a truer 
son, nor heaven opened wide her gates to receive a 
manlier spirit.' " 

It is said that in these few months Brooks had 
come to have a distaste for honors thrust upon him 
as the "representative of bullies," and that he felt 
the weight of history's verdict upon his "brutal, 
murderous and cowardly act." As Wilson wrote to 
Sumner on the day of his death: "His enemies 
cannot but feel sympathy for his fate. What a 
name to leave behind him!" Butler died a few 



220 CHAELES SUMNER 

months later, on almost the first anniversary of the 
assault. Keitt met his death fighting for the Con- 
federacy in 1864. 

It was peculiarly characteristic of Sumner that 
he cherished no resentment toward Brooks nor to- 
ward the people of the South. His only war was 
upon slavery. He was not present at Brooks's 
trial for assault in the District of Columbia court, 
and declared himself indifferent as to its outcome. 
Years later, when Brooks's name was mentioned to 
him, he said : " What have I to do with him ? It 
was slavery, not he that struck the blow." Two 
years before Sumner's death, George William Curtis 
called his attention to Brooks's cenotaph in the 
Congressional cemetery, where his remains had 
been temporarily interred. " Poor fellow, poor fel- 
low," said Sumner, turning away. " How did you 
feel about Brooks'?" Curtis then asked him. 
Sumner replied : " Only as to a brick that should 
fall upon my head from a chimney. He was the 
unconscious agent of a malign power." 



CHAPTEE XI 

IN QUEST OF HEALTH 

Sumner reached Paris toward the end of March, 
having followed the same route over which he had 
come, nineteen years before, all aglow with youthful 
enthusiasm. He came now heralded by a reputation 
for achievement and for devotion to a great cause. 
But his first concern was to seek out Crawford, the 
sculptor, whom he had befriended so effectively, but 
whom he now found in the shadow of death ; they 
were never to meet again. Sumner spent a busy 
month in Paris, during which he greatly enjoyed so- 
cial meetings and frank discussions with De Tocque- 
ville and Guizot, both of whom shared his views 
as to slavery, and with Lamartine and Mignet, get- 
ting an intimate knowledge of French leaders of 
thought and of European politics, soon to be of 
great service not only to himself but to his country. 
He found much recreation in visiting points of his- 
toric interest and in attending the opera and theatre, 
being greatly impressed by Eistori's acting. 

After a three-weeks' tour of the provinces, he 
crossed to London, where hosts of old friends over- 
whelmed him with kindness. He was the guest of 
Brougham and Cobden, and also of Gladstone and 
Bright, whom he now came to know for the first 
time. 



222 CHARLES SUMNER 

. En route to the Continent, he spent four delight- 
ful days with De Tocqueville, at his chateau, three 
or four centuries old, on the Island of Jersey. In 
Paris he eujoyed meeting his friends, Hamilton Fish 
and family, just arrived from New York. The next 
month was devoted to a hasty excursion, in the 
course of which he visited the points of most ar- 
chaeological and literary interest in Switzerland, 
Northern Italy, Holland and Belgium. In Septem- 
ber he returned to London, and presently started 
northward upon a tour which took him as a welcome 
guest to many a famous castle and country house. 
On his return from Scotland, he was for a day the 
guest of John Bright, and visited Gladstone. On 
the day of his sailing for America (against the ad- 
vice of physicians and friends who insisted upon " a 
longer ' fallow' for my brain ") he wrote intimately 
to Cobden : — u I leave England profoundly impressed 
by its civilization, and at the same time painfully 
regretting three things, — primogeniture, the flun- 
keyism of servants, and the tolls, — all three showing 
themselves everywhere." 

At the pier Sumner was greeted by Wilson, Banks, 
and other friends and at his home he found the 
street thronged with hundreds who had gathered to 
bid him welcome. A few weeks later he was cor- 
dially greeted by Republican colleagues at the open- 
ing of the Thirty-fifth Congress, but administration 
men kept aloof. The Kansas debate was to occupy 
much of the time of the session, the question being 
over the admission of Kansas upon the Lecompton 



IN QUEST OP HEALTH 223 

Constitution, a pro-slavery project which Douglas 
was now prepared to oppose. Sumner had come 
home because his conscience would not let him stay 
away from the field where such fierce fighting was 
to be done. But he soon found that while his months 
of travel had brought him interesting diversion, 
they had by no means restored him to health. A 
few days after the opening of the session he wrote : 
" At times I feel almost well, and then after a little 
writiug or a little sitting in the Senate, I feel the 
weight spreading over my brain. ' ' He was obliged 
to give up regular attendance, not being able to 
listen even to Douglas' s speech. He passed his time 
in quiet reading, browsing much in the Smithso- 
nian Institution. His enforced inaction was a sore 
trial to him. To Dr. Howe he wrote : "I would 
give one year of life for one week now to expose 
this enormous villainy" (the Lecompton Constitu- 
tion). But since attempts at regular attendance in 
the Senate were delaying his recovery, he left Wash- 
ington in late December, and for five months came 
to the Senate only when summoned to vote upon 
some matter of critical importance, usually in rela- 
tion to Kansas. Much of this time he spent in Phil- 
adelphia, and also at his Boston home or with Long- 
fellow. It was in these months of semi-invalidism 
that he developed a keen interest in old documents 
and engravings, devoting to their tireless study 
many days which would otherwise have hung heavily 
on his hands. But in April there came a warning 
that not only was his health far from restored but 



224 CHARLES SUMNER 

that he must get away from all cares and responsi- 
bilities. He suffered a severe prostration, brought 
on by no undue exertion ; for weeks he could neither 
walk nor rise from his chair without great pain. 
His best friends in the Senate as well as his medical 
advisers urged him to go to Europe once more, and 
reluctantly he started, May 22d — the second anni- 
versary of the assault — upon what he planned should 
be a leisurely tour of lands which he had not yet 
visited. Before sailing he published a letter to the 
people of Massachusetts, explaining that he was 
leaving the Senate solely for the purpose of fitting 
himself for better service, and that he should have 
resigned, had he not supposed his illness would have 
been more speedily cured. On the day of his land- 
ing at Havre he wrote in bitterness of spirit : " I 
long for work, and especially to make myself felt in 
our cause. The ghost of two years already dead 
haunts me." 

Sumner had hardly reached Paris when he was 
recommended to consult Dr. Brown-Sequard, who, 
while not in regular medical practice, had be- 
come quite famous for his bold experimenting on 
animals and men, and for his special studies of nerv- 
ous diseases. Both he and a Boston physician 
then in Paris, in whom Sumner had great confi- 
dence, agreed in the opinion that Sumner's case 
required not merely time and relaxation but "active 
treatment." Dr. Brown -Sequard's theory was that 
the blows upon Sumner's head had produced dis- 
turbances of the spinal cord in which now lay the 



IN QUEST OF HEALTH 225 

root of difficulty. The remedy which he advised 
was "Fire," — and Sumner asked that it be applied 
immediately. It was usual, during this process, for 
the patient to take chloroform, but when Sumner 
was told that the remedy might prove somewhat 
more effective without the anaesthetic, he refused to 
have it. At the time, Dr. Brown-Sequard gave the 
following account of the treatment: "I have ap- 
plied six moxas to Senator Sumner's neck and back, 
and he has borne these exceedingly painful ap- 
plications with the greatest courage and patience. 
A moxa is a burning of the skin with inflamed agaric 
(amadou), cottouwood, or some other very combusti- 
ble substance. I have never seen a man bearing with 
such fortitude as Mr. Sumner has shown the extremely 
violent pain of this kind of burning.' ' The appli- 
cations lasted from five to ten minutes. Sumner sat 
gripping the top of a chair which he broke as he 
writhed in agony. Nor did the torture end with the 
burning, for wounds were caused which refused to 
heal, and which deprived him of sleep and made 
both driving and walking exceedingly painful. 
He wrote to Longfellow : ' ' The torment is great, 
. . . and then the succession of blisters, inflam- 
mations and smarts. I struggle for health, and do 
everything simply to that end. The doctor is clear 
that without this cruel treatment I should have been 
a permanent invalid, always subject to a sudden and 
serious relapse. Surely this life is sometimes held 
<>n hard conditions." This mode of treatment then 
met with approval from many men of distinction in 



226 CHAKLES SUMNEK 

the medical profession, though now entirely dis- 
carded. In his later practice, Dr. Brown-Sequard 
himself discontinued it, regarding the pain which 
he had seen Sumner suffer as too great for the 
human system to endure. 1 

It was while he was under Dr. Brown-Sequard' s 
ministrations that Sumner experienced his first at- 
tack of angina pectoris, the painful disease which 
was to cause his death. The attack was very severe, 
and the pains recurred with such intensity as to 
' ' make the fire seem pleasant. ' ' For two months he 
was hardly able to leave his bed. His sufferings were 
intense, but his loneliness was somewhat relieved 
by scores of letters and messages of sympathy from 
friends in America and England. His greatest com- 
fort, when he could leave his bed, was in the exami- 
nation of the rich collections of engravings in the 
National Library. 

In September Sumner spent several weeks in Aix 
en Savoie, trying its celebrated baths, with no 
marked results. But at the end of this treatment, 
he was able to travel by slow degrees through Swit- 
zerland and northern Italy, and to visit Vienna, 
Prague and Berlin, where he met Alexander von 
Humboldt. In November he reached Paris. Con- 
siderable gain was noted from these months of travel, 
and it was decided that he should spend the winter 
in the south of France, 4v with poisons for medicine'' 
and dry cupping along the spine, which Sumner de- 
scribed as painful, but preferable to fire. Accord - 
1 Pierce, Vol. Ill, pp. 563-565. 



IN QUEST OF HEALTH 227 

ingly, late in November, Sumner went to Montpel- 
lier. Here lie "began the day with his torments, 
and fed on his poisons." But fortunately other 
curative agencies were at hand. The quiet little 
city of 50,000 had an excellent gallery and a vener- 
able university, and in the collections of paintings, 
engravings, manuscripts and rare books there 
were abundant interests to stimulate him. Warm 
friends, too, he made in the families of a distinguished 
naturalist and of a retired English soldier, one of 
Wellington's veterans. Sumner was most cordially 
received at the university, where he attended courses 
of lectures on historical and literary topics. The 
quiet walks, the " perpetual spring," the genial so- 
ciety and the refuge and solace which he found in 
books brought healing. But he could not banish 
from his mind the doubt whether he ought not to 
resign from the Senate. From colleagues and from 
Massachusetts advisers he received urgent charges 
not to consider such a step. And, as he wrote to 
Charles Francis Adams, "I could not abandon a 
position dearer to me now than ever, because more 
than ever, with returning health, I can hope to serve 
our cause j and because I have at heart to be heard 
again from the seat where my assassination was at- 
tempted." 

Sumner left Montpellier early in March, and 
traveled with many stops through southern France 
and northern Italy. These wanderings he described 
with enthusiasm, but added : " Nothing touches me 
like Borne." Here he spent several weeks, the 



228 CHARLES SUMNER 

guest of the Storys. Though but just recovering 
from long illness, his enthusiasm kept him con- 
stantly on the move from one object of interest to 
another. He found especial delight in the studios 
of painters and sculptors, in particular discussing 
with Rogers the persons and scenes to be commemo- 
rated upon the bronze doors for the Capitol at 
Washington, which were then being modeled. The 
unfinished work in Crawford's studio tilled him with 
sorrow. Motley and Hawthorne were among the 
friends with whom he passed many a delightful 
hour. But he was ever beset by the call of duty. 
To Story he kept saying : "I must get well ; I will 
get well ! My post is in the Senate, and there I long 
to be. . . . It is terrible to be thus stricken 
down when there is so much to do." 

Sumner left Italy shortly before the battle of 
Magenta. He felt it to be " a great moment in his- 
tory, — nothing like it since 1815." At Turin he 
had an informal interview with the foremost states- 
man of the age, Cavour. He found him confident 
that the Austriaus would be driven out of Italy 
that summer, and full of hope that Italy would take 
the place that belonged to her, and that when free 
she might again produce great men. Here, too, he 
found all the grandes dames u engaged in making 
lint for the hospitals, and most happy that the 
crisis, long desired, had at length come." On his 
way in an open carriage across the Alps Sumner 
seemed to be traveling in a pageant, for he was 
constantly passing through files of French troops, 



IN QUEST OF HEALTH 229 

entering Italy. He yielded to the current belief 
that Napoleon III. would hold himself faithful to 
the idea of Italian independence, but his misgivings 
because of the " strength of that prodigious tri- 
angle" and of his distrust of the Emperor proved 
well grounded. On his return to Paris Sumner 
was encouraged to note how much he had gained in 
strength since the days when he underwent torture 
in the same lodgings. He met here Motley and 
Theodore Parker, and renewed acquaintance with 
French friends of former years. He spent a few 
weeks in London, but the round of social pleasures 
and the interest of parliamentary sessions proved too 
severe a tax upon his strength. He was in Paris 
again in time to witness the Emperor's triumphal 
return from Italy. 

Both in Paris and in London he found delight in 
indulging in his newly awakened passion for collect- 
ing. He wrote to Parker: "For several days I 
have been torn and devoured by desires that have 
grown by what they fed on, — at shops on the quays 
aud collections of engravings. I have yielded, till 
I stand aghast at my extravagance ! " * His greatest 

)It has been estimated that he devoted about $2,800 upon 
this trip to the purchase of books, manuscripts, engravings and 
works of art, — no small sum for a man in his position. He 
was not a good judge of values, nor had he any liKing or apti- 
tude for bargaining. The result was that he always paid high 
prices and often for articles not of great value. By the terms 
of his will his marbles went to his sister; his bronzes were 
divided between Longfellow and Howe; his paintings and en- 
gravings went to the Boston Art Museum; and his books, 
autographs and old manuscripts to the Library of Harvard 
College. 



230 CHAELES SUMNER 

pleasure was in his engravings. But a sight which 
he declared filled him with even keener delight than 
these was that of "some twenty colored boys, — some 
niulattoes, and others black as Ham, — seated 
among the pupils at the College of Havre. Several 
of these, including one of the blackest, were among 
those who received prizes. " 

A few lines from a letter to a friend written on 
the day Sumner sailed for America will give an idea 
of some of his engagements during his last days in 
England: " Seven days in London at the British 
Museum ; a day with the poet-laureate, Tennyson, at 
the Isle of Wight ; two days with Lord Stanhope at 
Cheveniug Park, where I slept in the room which 
was occupied for three years by Lord Chatham ; one 
day at Argyll Lodge with the Duke, where I met 
Gladstone : . . . one day with Motley, the 
historian of the Dutch commonwealth, at Walton 
on Thames." 

November 21, 1859, Sumner reached Boston, and 
was most warmly greeted not only by personal 
friends but in public meetings and by the legisla- 
ture. During these three years and a half of his 
disability, Massachusetts had remained loyal to him. 
There was no wish for his resignation, for it was 
felt that the state could be better served by no one 
else, and that his seat in the Senate chamber, vacant 
year after year, was bearing eloquent witness to the 
great cause of which Charles Sumner was one of the 
first martyrs. 



CHAPTER XII 

"the barbarism of slavery" 

Sumner found the Senate not a little changed 
since the day when he first entered it. Then he 
had been one of but three Free Soilers ; now there 
were already twenty-four Republicans to forty-four 
of all other parties, and the admission of Oregon 
and Minnesota had given promise that the control 
of the Senate by the South was nearing its end. 
Sumner was warmly welcomed by the Republican 
members, but met with only formal recognition 
from men on the other side of the chamber. An 
indication of change, however, was his assignment 
to the Committee on Foreign Relations. Here his 
only Republican colleague was Seward, the others 
being Crittenden, Douglas, Polk and Slidell, with 
the last three of whom Sumner had no personal in- 
tercourse. Indeed, he found that in the years of his 
absence from Washington, the sectional line had 
come to be drawn with much greater severity in 
social relations, so that for the most part representa- 
tives of the two sections met only as their official 
duties required. 

These years had seen long steps taken toward the 
great crisis which in some form was felt to be im- 
minent : in the Dred Scott case the Supreme Court 



232 CHARLES SUMNER 

had set the seal of its approval upon the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise ; free-state men in Kansas 
had secured control of the territorial legislature and 
had rejected admission to the Union on the Lecomp- 
ton Constitution ; Douglas had effectively divided 
t he Democratic party, first by forcing the Kansas- 
Nebraska issue, and secondly by consistently op- 
posing the thrusting of a pro-slavery constitution 
upon Kansas, against her will. Douglas was now 
fresh from the great debate-campaign in Illinois, 
from which he had wrested a reelection to the 
Senate, but at the cost of admissions and conces- 
sions that were to blast his hopes for the presidency. 
The Southern leaders, seeing the North outstripping 
them, had been planniDg for the acquisition of Cuba 
to restore the balance ; since that project failed, 
their old threats of disunion took on new force and 
definiteness. 

Following the advice of physicians and friends, 
Sumner declined urgent invitations to address public 
gatherings and kept out of the Senate debates. The 
one absorbing topic of discussion soon became the 
choice of presidential candidates. Congress was 
still in session when the Democratic national con- 
vention met at Charleston and ended in disrup- 
tion over Douglas's candidacy, and when the Re- 
publicans in Chicago passed over Seward and Chase 
to nominate the less-known Lincoln, with his better 
chance of carrying the doubtful states of the West. 1 

'On the first ballot, one delegate— from Kentucky— voted 
for Sumner. 



"THE BAEBAEISM OF SLAVEEY" 233 

Sumner, as usual, had been slow to commit himself 
or to give advice as to the selection of the standard- 
bearer, only insisting that no one ought to be chosen 
who was not " emphatically, heart and soul, life 
aud conversation, a representative man, . . . 
an old and constant servant of the cause." 

While these decisive choices were being made, 
Southern leaders in Congress were taking more ad- 
vanced ground as to slavery than ever before. Not 
only did they now assert that the institution was a 
positive good, beneficial to the black and ennobling 
to the white, but they sought by threat of secession 
to exact from Congress the most definite guarantees. 
Thus, Jefferson Davis's resolutions, affirming the 
sanctity of slave property in the territories, were 
passed by a vote of two to one. 

It was under these circumstances that Sumner de- 
termined to attempt in the Senate an attack upon 
slavery such as had never been ventured in Congress. 
For months he had been marshaling his material 
for this speech, to which he had given the title, 
" The Barbarism of Slavery." The bill for the ad- 
mission of Kansas as a free state was pending. As 
this would entitle Kansas to six votes in the coming 
election, there was not the slightest possibility that 
the Democratic majority would allow the bill to 
pass at this session, but the debate upon it gave op- 
portunity for a number of senators to express their 
views. Sumner took the floor on the morning of 
Monday, June 4th. Not yet certain of his strength, 
he had bis speech in type. It was the first time 



234 CHAKLES SUMNER 

since the assault, more than four years before, that 
he had thus formally addressed the Senate. 

At the outset he disclaimed having any personal 
griefs to utter or personal wrongs to avenge, adding, 
"The years which have intervened and the tombs 
that have opened since I spoke, have their voices, 
too, which I cannot fail to hear." He then declared 
his intent to lay bare the true character of slavery 
in its social, moral and economic as well as political 
aspects. He proceeded to set forth its barbarism, 
in degrading a human being into a chattel, in its 
pernicious effects upon marriage and the relations 
between parent and child, in shutting to the slave 
the door of moral and intellectual life, and in its 
exploitation of the slave's labor. These, he showed, 
were all features essential to slavery, here lacking 
many of the alleviations that had gathered about 
other forms of servitude. He next presented, with 
a convincing particularity of statistical detail, the 
] xactical effects which slavery had had upon the 
Southern states in their slow growth in population 
and in wealth, in their dearth of inventions and in- 
ternal improvements, in their scanty development 
in education, etc. A humiliating exhibition was 
made of the brutalizing effects upon the masters. 
He insisted, as he had repeatedly done before, that 
the Constitution afforded no recognition of property 
in a human being, and held up to ridicule Douglas's 
••popular sovereignly" dogma as a il device of 
politicians." 

The speech lasted four hours and over. There 



"THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY" 235 

was no attempt at interruption, but many of the 
Southern senators, as if by prearrangement, showed 
contemptuous indifference, walking about the cham- 
ber and engaging in boisterous conversation, appar- 
ently with a childish intention of annoying the 
speaker. At its close, Chestnut of South Caroliua 
put himself forward as the spokesman of the South- 
ern members : " After ranging over Europe, crawl- 
ing through the back-door to whine at the feet of 
British aristocracy, craving pity, and reaping a rich 
harvest of contempt, the slanderer of states and men 
reappears in the Senate. ... It has been left 
for this day, for this country, for the Abolitionists 
of Massachusetts, to deify the incarnation of malice, 
mendacity and cowardice. . . . We are not in- 
clined again to send forth the recipient of punish- 
ment howling through the world, yelping fresh cries 
of slander and malice." x Sumner's only rejoinder 
was that he should print Chestnut's reply as another 
illustration of the barbarism to which he had just 
been alluding. 

This was the last speech of any moment on slavery 
delivered in Congress and, with " The Crime against 
Kansas," stands to-day as comprising the most thor- 
ough setting forth of the indictment against Ameri- 
can slavery ever made. Several of Sumner's friends 
insisted on escorting him to his lodgings, and for 

1 He condensed into two minutes, says Von Hoist, " so enor- 
mous an amount of brutal and venomous vulgarity . . . 
that the annals of Congress, rich as they are in such material, 
have nothing to match them." — Constitutional History of the 
United States, Vol. VIII, p. 203. 



236 CHARLES SUMNER 

some time thereafter, quite to his annoyance, they 
kept guard over his apartment at night. 

Among most of Sumner's Republican colleagues 
and friends there was grave doubt as to the wisdom 
and timeliness of this " assault on American slavery 
all along the line." It was on the eve of a presi- 
dential election, and many feared that voters who 
were not of pronounced anti-slavery principles would 
be repelled by having this issue thrust into such of- 
fensive prominence. But Sumner never could be 
brought to govern his actions according to the party 
expediency of the moment. To him, the slavery 
issue was the all-dominating moral question of the 
age, to be incessantly forced upon public attention 
until it should be settled aright. And, in fact, it 
may be doubted whether now, as on earlier similar 
occasions, Sumner did not prove the more far-sighted 
politician. His address was printed entire, in 
enormous editions in all the leading newspapers, 
and pamphlet editions of it were spread broadcast 
by the National Republican Committee. Hundreds 
of private letters as well as general comment in Re- 
publican journals approved the steadfast, uncom- 
promising tone of the speech, and in the campaign 
of the next few months it was found that this was 
the note which called out the most responsive en- 
thusiasm. Soon after the end of the session, at the 
invitation of the Young Men's Republican Union, 
Sumner addressed an audience of three thousand in 
the Cooper Institute upon " The Origin, Necessity 
and Permanence of the Republican Party." It was 



"THE BAEBAEISM OF SLAVEEY " 237 

a brilliant triumph. The speaker's voice and 
strength seemed fully restored and from the begin- 
ning to the end he held his hearers in complete sway. 
At the Eepublican state convention in Worcester, 
for the first time in six years he appeared before his 
own constituency, and aroused the delegates by his 
denunciation of the Douglas " popular sovereignty 
dodge," and by his expressions of cordial confidence 
in Lincoln. The night before the election, he pre- 
sided at a great Eepublican gathering in Faneuil 
Hall, and thrilled his hearers by the prediction that 
Eepublican victory on the morrow would make 
"not only a new President, but a new govern- 
ment." 

Sumner yielded to none of the urgent demands 
for his services as a campaign speaker outside of 
his own state, trusting to the wide circulation of his 
two recent speeches to spread his views. In the 
autumn, he prepared, for the Lyceum platform, an 
eloquent address on Lafayette. He had recently 
visited scenes associated with the French patriot 
aud was fitted both by information and tempera- 
ment to give an appreciative tribute to the man. 
But, in accordance with his frequent practice, he 
made his subject almost secondary to the political 
issue of the hour, for the points which he thrust into 
greatest prominence were Lafayette's "constant 
testimony against American slavery" and his life- 
long devotion to liberty. This address was delivered 
four times in cities of New England, and in New 
York and Philadelphia, and many a man to-day re- 



238 CHAKLES SUMNER 

calls the thrill with which, as a youth, he listened to 
that inspiring oration. 

American history has known no more critical 
period than the months between the November elec- 
tion and Lincoln's inauguration. These three 
months of an outgoing administration, — always a 
season of weakness, especially when a change of 
party is impending, — were then filled with the 
gravest uncertainties. Many courses seemed pos- 
sible, yet choices apparently trifling might involve 
the fate of the nation. 

Southern leaders had been making their plans far 
ahead, and had determined upon their course in the 
not improbable event of Lincoln's election. But 
Northern men were now surprised and aghast to 
find that disunion, so long threatened, was rapidly 
being carried into effect. Straightway there came 
forward in the North men who justified secession as 
a constitutional right. A feeling of panic at the 
thought of the break-up of the Union quickly spread, 
and every sacrifice seemed necessary in order to 
avoid that catastrophe. In Boston, as in other large 
cities, this feeling showed itself immediately in an- 
tagonism to open discussion of anti-slavery meas- 
ures. Mobs broke up anti-slavery meetings, and 
the Boston Courier said in a leader: " Nor do we 
believe that our people will listen hereafter to the 
fierce tirades of Phillips and his crew, to the empty 
platitudes of Sumner, or the insolent bravado of 
Wilson." ■ 

1 December 4, I860. 



"THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY" 239 

Meantime Buchanan was waiting upon events, — 
events which. Southern members of his cabinet 
were shaping to the advantage of the South. In the 
midst of all this uncertainty, men of undoubted 
patriotism sought anxiously for the course which 
would ward off impending civil war. At the dis- 
tance of half a century the student of history must 
seek to realize how impenetrable then was the future ; 
nor must he deny patriotic motives to many a prop- 
osition which, in the clear light of the after-event, 
seems doomed from the first to prove futile if not 
fatal. Greeley was ready to bid the slave states 
" go in peace" ; Phillips vehemently asserted their 
right to secede ; General Scott busied himself with 
elaborate schemes for the peaceful division of the 
United States into four confederacies ; and many 
influential men at the North were outspoken in 
favor of formal guarantees being given of the rights 
of slave-owners to take their slaves into the terri- 
tories and hold them. 

Congress had hardly met when compromise meas- 
ures began to be proposed, the most favored scheme 
being that of Crittenden, which had as its cardinal 
features the prohibition of slavery north of 36° 30', 
but its distinct recognition and protection by terri- 
torial governments south of that line ; the prohibi- 
tion for all future time of any amendment to the 
Constitution giving Congress power to interfere with 
slavery in the states ; the disfranchisement of free 
negroes in all the states ; and the enforcement of the 
law against the African slave-trade. Seward de- 



240 CHARLES SUMNEE 

clared that two-thirds of the Republican senators 
were " as reckless in action as the South," aud inti- 
mated that he felt himself commissioned to be the 
reconciler. In January, at the end of an elaborate 
speech, he presented his remedies : the organization 
of territories aud the admission of states without 
conditions as to slavery j an irrevocable constitu- 
tional amendment prohibiting interference by Con- 
gress with slavery in the states ; and a convention to 
revise the Constitution. Even Charles Francis 
Adams, hitherto one of the most loyal of the Free 
Soil men, now showed hesitancy and an inclination 
to accept Seward's proposals. 

In the midst of all this uncertainty and com- 
promise, no man evidenced a clearer vision of the 
future or a more steadfast purpose in the present 
than did Sumner. To Howe he wrote on January 
17th: "I trust that Massachusetts continues uu- 
seduced by airy proposal of compromise or conces- 
sion, in whatever form or name. My best energies 
have been devoted to keep our men firm, firm, 
firm." A few days in advance of its delivery, 
Seward read his speech to Sumner, who " pro- 
tested with his whole soul" against its compromise 
proposals. Beset by a member of the House with 
the question what " concession " he was ready to 
make, Sumner replied: " There is one: I will 
consent to be silent yet a little longer." x From 

'Sumner and the other radicals, both in the Senate and in the 
House, also sat silent and offered no word of protest to the pas- 
sage at this session of the bill for the organization of the terri- 



"THE BABBARISM OF SLAVERY" L>41 

time to time, iu the course of the debates, be made 
his attitude plain, but he held himself back from 
speaking his full mind because he felt that he 
"could say nothing which would not be perverted 
by compromisers as an attempt to widen the 
breach." He alone of the Massachusetts delega- 
tion in Congress opposed the state's being repre- 
sented in the peace conference which met at Wash- 
ington in February and endorsed compromise 
measures similar to those of Crittenden. Sumner 
early came to believe that war was inevitable, and 
that its issue was to be decided only after a long 
and bitter contest. Yet he never doubted that the 
Union would triumph, his confidence being based 
upon his belief "in a world governed by moral 
law." To Whittier he wrote: "People are 
anxious to save our forts, to save the national cap- 
ital ; but I am more anxious to save our principles, 
which leaders now propose to abandon as Mr. 
Buchanan proposed to abandon Fort Sumter." 
He earnestly besought Massachusetts leaders not to 

tories of Colorado, Dakota and Nevada, without any mention 
of slavery, " thus giving the South the benefit of the Dred 
Scott decision therein." Blaine discusses this "extraordinary 
change of position " at some length. " Between the words of 
Mr. Seward and Mr. Sumner in the one crisis and their votes in 
the other, there is a discrepancy for which it would have been 
well to leave on record an adequate explanation. The danger to 
the Union, in which they found a good reason for receding from 
the anti-slavery restriction on the territories, had been cruelly 
denied to Mr. Webster as a justifying motive. They found in 
him only a guilty recreate to sacred principle for the same act 
which in themselves was inspired by devotion to the Union." 
—Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. I, pp. 269-272. 



242 CHARLES SUMNEE 

yield a jot in the way of modifying the personal 
liberty laws, and it is thought that it was his in- 
fluence by which the legislature was persuaded. 
He believed that the very inordinateness of the 
Southern demands would make it next to impos- 
sible to appease them. "If they asked less, we 
should be lost." 

While for the most part keeping out of the 
debate, he did read in the Senate with great effect a 
theretofore unpublished letter of Andrew Jackson, 
of May, 1833, when the nullification controversy 
was fresh in mind, in which this Southern Demo- 
crat declared that " the tariff was only the pretext, 
and disunion the real object," and that " the next 
pretext will be the negro and slavery question." 1 
Again he spoke to the point, when Massachusetts' 
attitude was brought in question. A "Union" 
meeting, held in Boston, had endorsed the Critten- 
den Compromise, and a committee came to Wash- 
ington to urge its adoption, as advocated by the 
formal vote of the Boston City Council and by a 
petition signed by 23,000 Massachusetts citizens. 
Everett and Lawrence waited upon Sumner and 
begged him to support it, but found him unyield- 
ing. 2 When the petition, wrapped in the Aineri- 

1 Works, Vol. V, pp. 433-436. 

2 With them came "a large number of the most conspicuous 
citizens of Boston, all of whom had been among his strongest 
and most positive political opponents." They expressed at 
length their confidence in him as the one man who could do 
most to save the country in its present peril. "We implore 
you, Mr. Sumner, as you love your country and your God, to 
vote for the Crittenden Compromise." "Sir," said Charles 



u 



THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY" 243 



can flag, was presented by Crittenden, Sumner 
spoke briefly, declaring that the propositions therein 
contained went " beyond the Breckinridge platform, 
already solemnly condemned by the American 
people in the election of Abraham Lincoln," and 
asserted that the petitioners could have signed the 
measure only in ignorance of its real character. 
This was resented by the Boston City Council, 
which declared the statement "undignified, unbe- 
coming a senator and a citizen of Boston, and un- 
true " ; yet Sumner received many letters, some 
even from signers, who acknowledged that his 
words were entirely just. 1 

Of all the Republican leaders, Sumner found 
himself most iu accord with Chase, who started the 
watchword, " Inauguration first, adjustment after- 
ward;" and he also drew encouragement from 
Lincoln's declaration that the Republican party 
should not with his assent become " a mere sucked 
egg, all shell and no meat,— the principle all 
sucked out." He was often consulted by Stanton 
and the other loyal members of the cabinet as to the 
preliminaries to the inauguration. In the Senate, 
which met immediately after Lincoln's taking the 

Sumner rising to bis lofty height-, and never more Charles Sum- 
ner than at that moment, " if what you say is indeed true, and 
if at this moment the North trusts me, as you think, beyond 
all others, it is because the North knows that under no circum- 
stances whatever would I compromise." — G. W. Curtis, 
Orations, Vol. Ill, pp. 225-226. 

1 John M. Forbes declared : "One young rascal complained 
loudly that 'he hadn't a chance to sign it only fourteen 
times.' " 



244 CHARLES SUMNER 

oath of office, the Republicans found themselves iu 
majority, and heuce in control of the committees. 
Nine years before, Bright of Indiana — soon to be 
expelled for treason — had explained the exclusion 
of Chase, Hale and Sumner from the committee list 
by saying that they were "outside of any healthy 
political organization." It was noted as a matter 
of poetic justice that it now fell to this same man to 
move the report of the committee list which had 
been agreed upon by the two parties. Old time 
Free Soilers now came to their own. Sumner was 
named chairman of the Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions, and a member of the Committees on Private 
Land Claims and on Patents. His chairmanship 
was a position exceedingly congenial to him, and 
one in which his thorough grounding in inter- 
national law, his unrivaled knowledge of European 
politics and acquaintance with European public 
men placed him where he could be of incalculable 
service to his country. For eight years he was to 
work for the most part harmoniously with Seward 
as Secretary of State, although from now on they 
had little sympathy with each other's views upon 
the most important questions of domestic policy. 

Years in advance of the time when reform of the 
civil service commanded public attention, Sumner 
attempted, as far as his influence would permit, to 
put its principles in practice. He urged the reten- 
tion of faithful and competent officers and the dis- 
regard of proportional distribution of offices where 
it hindered efficiency. So far as the appoint- 



"THE BARBARISM OF SLAVERY" 245 

meats which fell to Massachusetts were concerned, 
Sumner took the list, which had been agreed upon 
by the delegation while in Boston, to the President, 
and urged that these appointments, while not ideal, 
should be made forthwith, in order that the whole 
question might be taken out of discussion when so 
much more vital matters needed attention ; aud this 
was done. Sumner's weakness in his own selections 
for office usually lay in his overweighting literary 
ability as a qualification. Personal favoritism could 
never justly be urged against his candidates ; service 
in the anti-slavery ranks counted for much with 
him. It was this that led to his naming Palfrey for 
postmaster of Boston, and to his earnest but unsuc- 
cessful efforts to secure the appointment of Howe as 
Minister to Greece. 

Before Sumner started for Boston at the end of 
the session, Sumter had fallen, and Lincoln had 
issued his first call for volunteers. Upon his way 
North, Sumner stopped for the night in Baltimore, 
but when it became known that he was in the city, 
a riotous mob gathered. The proprietor of the 
hotel where he had taken a room, alarmed for his 
property if the anti-slavery leader should be dis- 
covered under his roof, demanded that he leave at 
once, but Sumner insisted upon the rights due a 
guest, and was accordingly lodged for the night 
in concealment. The next morning, on his way to 
Philadelphia, Sumner met a train filled with rollick- 
ing soldier boys : it was the Sixth Regiment of 
Massachusetts, forty of whose members were that 



246 CHAKLES SUMNER 

very day to be killed or wounded in the streets of 
Baltimore by a secession mob, such as had hunted 
him as its first victim ; and alter this, their first day 
of battle, these soldier boys were to be quartered 
for the night in the Senate chamber at Washington. 
In New York Sumner visited the armory where a 
battalion of Massachusetts Rifles were quartered. 
His words to them were a clarion call to battle for 
" Massachusetts, the Constitution and Freedom." 
The time had come when even the author of " The 
True Grandeur of Nations," with all his heart and 
soul, could bid men Godspeed in such a war ! 



CHAPTEE XIII 

WAR PROBLEMS : THE TRENT AFFAIR 

Congress met in special session on the Fourth of 
July, 1861. A week before its opeuiug, Sumner 
wrote to Lieber that he had proposed to the Presi- 
dent and his cabinet a programme of legislation, 
which should include an army bill, a navy bill, a 
bill for a loan and war taxes, a bill for treason, and 
a bill of embargo and non- intercourse. He added 
that he hoped this would be carried out " without a 
single speech, or one word of buncombe, so that one 
short session may be a mighty act." It is signifi- 
cant both of the consideration already shown Sumner 
and of his growing sense of his own importance, that 
he should have put before the administration such a 
comprehensive programme. 

In the early months of the war great pains were 
taken to disclaim any anti -slavery purpose, and 
where officials, civil or military, had taken ac- 
tion which seemed to commit the administration 
to any such policy, it was promptly disavowed. 
The preservation of the Union was the one ground 
on which Lincoln wished to base his con- 
duct of the war. In diplomatic as well as in 
domestic correspondence, Seward repeatedly as- 
serted that the status of slavery would remain un- 
changed, whatever the outcome of the insurrection. 



248 CHAKLES SUMNER 

From the outset, Sumner and many of the other 
radical auti-slavery leaders believed that this policy 
was a most unfortunate mistake. They recognized, 
however, that, with a view to keeping in touch with 
the border states and with the great mass of Repub- 
licans whose chief interest was not in the anti- 
slavery movement but in the preservation of the 
Union, it was best not to force the issue prema- 
turely. 1 But the disaster at Bull Run brought a 
great awakening ; George Sumner greeted the news 
with jubilation confident that at last the admin- 
istration and the public would be aroused to the 
magnitude of the task before them. 2 

As early as May of that year, Charles Sumner 
had broached the subject of emancipation to the 
President, and urged him to be prepared to 
strike when the proper moment arrived. He now 
besought him to come out openly against slavery. 
This the President was not ready to do, though he 
carefully weighed Sumner's arguments, particularly 
his contention that the disavowal of any humanita- 
rian motive was making the war seem one merely for 
power, and was greatly weakening the Union cause 
in the eyes of European nations, whose sympathy 
we should do nothing to estrange. 

1 It was doubtless this conviction which induced Sumner— and 
Thaddeus Stevens and Owen Lovejoy, in the House— to abstain 
from voting upon the Crittenden resolution declaring that the 
war was not waged " in any spirit of oppression, or for any pur- 
pose of conquest or subjugation, or the overthrowing or inter- 
fering witli the rights or established institutions of those states," 
— Blaine, Twenty Vears of Congress, Vol. I, p. 341. 

2 Autobiography of And trir )). White, Vol. 1, p. 88. 



WAR PROBLEMS 249 

In October Simmer, upon his own responsibility, 
took a decided step. At the Massachusetts state 
Republican convention at Worcester, he made a 
brief speech in which he insisted that slavery was 
the sole cause and the main strength of the rebel- 
lion, and that it should therefore be struck down by 
every power at the government's command. Said 
he: "It is often said that the war will make an 
end of slavery. This is probable, but it is surer 
still that the overthrow of slavery will make an eud 
of the war. ... A simple declaration that all 
men within the lines of the Uuited States troops are 
freemen will be in strict conformity with the Con- 
stitution and also with precedent. The Constitu- 
tion knows no man as slave. . . . There is a 
higher agency that may be invoked, which is at the 
same time under the Constitution and above the Con- 
stitution, — I mean martial law, in its plenitude, and 
declared by solemn proclamation." He cited John 
Quincy Adams as authority for the power to eman- 
cipate slaves by martial law. While not assuming 
to say that the hour for such action had come, he 
did declare that "there are times when not to act 
carries with it greater responsibility than to act." 

In this speech for the first time an American 
statesman openly and boldly advocated the policy of 
emancipation. His words made a profound impres- 
sion, but an attempt to secure an endorsement of the 
recommendation in the convention's resolutions 
showed that there was much opposition. To veteran 
Free Soilers this call for an end of "the policy of 



250 CHARLES SUMNER 

forbearance" toward slavery was most welcome. 
But to those of more conservative temperament and 
traditions, it seemed incendiary. Boston journals, 
as usual, were especially denunciatory, referring to 
Sumner's "insane counsels" and speaking of him 
as a "candidate from an insane asylum." "Pro- 
claim the policy of emancipation," said one, "and 
all hope of reconstruction of the Union will be 
crushed out." Eight years later, however, one of 
these Boston editors, who had ever been severely 
critical of Sumner's politics, wrote : "I am struck 
with wonder at the clear comprehension which you 
had of the magnitude of the war at the beginning, 
and of the true and ouly means by which it could be 
conducted to a proper termination. Your speech 
reads to-day like a sacred prophecy. For it you 
were assailed ; but it was true, nevertheless, and the 
country came at length to your defense by adopting 
your statesmanship.'' ' 

A few weeks later great enthusiasm was aroused 
in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and other cities 
by an address on "The Rebellion, its Origin and 
Mainspring," in which Sumner elaborated and en- 
forced the points of his Worcester speech. With 
tremendous force he denounced slavery as the sole 
cause aud support of the war, and insisted that 
emancipation was a military necessity. " In no 
way can we do so much at so little cost. To the 
enemy such a blow will be a terror ; to good men it 

1 William Schouler, Feb. 18, 1869. Quoted by Pierce, Vol. 
IV, p. 46. 



WAR PROBLEMS 251 

will be an encouragement ; and to foreign nations 
watching this contest it will be an earnest of some- 
thing beyond a mere carnival of battle." 

From this time on, in season and out of season, in 
the Senate, in public addresses, in conference with 
the President and with public men, Sumner never 
ceased to urge emancipation. In the midst of all 
the wavering and uncertainty, his steadfast adher- 
ence to this policy, at first deemed revolutionary, 
but soon recognized as inevitable, was one of the 
most potent influences in preparation for that ulti- 
mate resort. 

In the summer of 1861 the Northern arms seemed 
to make no progress. There was deep depression at 
home, while abroad the belief was becoming fixed 
that the Union was already dissolved. It was in 
these days of gloom that an event took place which 
wrought the whole country to the highest pitch of 
excitement, and bade fair to involve the gravest 
consequences. On the 8th of November, Captain 
Wilkes of the United States naval-ship San Jacinto 
boarded the British steamer Trent between Havana 
and Nassau, two neutral ports, and seized Mason 
and Slidell, with two secretaries and despatches. 
These men, who had been duly accredited as envoys 
of the Confederate States to England and France re- 
spectively, were brought to the United States and 
placed in confinement. This exploit was hailed 
with wild enthusiasm throughout the North. The 
Secretary of the Navy declared that Captain Wilkes's 
act was "marked by intelligence, ability, decision 



252 CHAELES SUMXER 

and firmness, and has the emphatic approval of this 
department." 

It is asserted that at first ' ' no man was more elated 
and jubilant over the capture of the emissaries than 
Mr. Seward." l Indeed, of all the members of the 
cabinet, Postmaster- General Blair was the only one 
who is known to have taken an opposing view at 
the outset. 2 At the opening of Congress, the very 
first act of the House of Representatives was by 
unanimous resolution, without even reference to a 
committee, to commend Captain Wilkes's "brave, 
adroit, and patriotic conduct." The press and pub- 
lic men, with few exceptions, joined in the chorus 
of jubilation and praise. Sumner was still in Bos- 
ton when he heard of the envoys' capture. With- 
out a moment's hesitation he declared, "We shall 
have to give them up." From that opinion he 
never wavered, for he knew both the law of nations 



1 Seward's most recent biographer does not deny that this was 
probably the line of the Secretary's first opinion and impulses. 
He points out that Seward was most likely to regard political 
results as of prime consideration. He at this time believed 
England and France to be on the point of intervening, and was 
putting forth his best efforts to remove all causes of friction. 
The Trent seizure was totally unexpected and counter to the 
diplomatic plans of the administration. "His habitual te- 
nacity of purpose was likely to hold him to his policy of 
avoiding a war. But there was the popular applause of Wilkes; 
and it always made Seward very unhappy to find that the peo- 
ple were against him, unless he felt confident of quickly win- 
ning them back to his side. In such circumstances the shrewd 
politician tries to wear a complacent look while he waits until 
compelled to decide." — Frederic Bancroft, The Life of William 
H. Seward, Vol. II, pp. 232-233. 

'Welles, Lincoln and Seward, pp. 186-187. 



WAR PROBLEMS 253 

and the temper of the British government and pub- 
lic. From his correspondence he was well aware 
that in England public opinion was now very 
favorable to the South and that probably a 
large majority in the House of Commons would be 
" glad to find an excuse for voting for the dismem- 
berment of the great republic." 1 Sumner's belief 
that the British government would promptly resent 
the seizure was speedily justified : a suitable apology 
and the surrender of the four men was immediately 
demanded, and the British minister received private 
instructions, in case these demands were not com- 
plied with, to end all diplomatic relations with the 
United States and take other measures looking di- 
rectly toward war. The gravity of the situation was 
further indicated by the despatching forthwith of 
some 8,000 troops to Canada and by preparations to 
strengthen the English fleet in American waters. 

Upon reaching Washington, Sumner was relieved 
to find that the seizure had been absolutely unauthor- 
ized and that the President had grave misgivings as 
to the capture, despite the almost unanimous ap- 
proval of it in his cabinet and throughout the coun- 
try. 2 In the Senate Sumner did his best to prevent 

1 Morley's Life of Cobden, Vol. II, pp. 388-390. 

2 The President's doubts and misgivings, Welles declares, were 
"increased after an interview with Senator Sumner, with whom 
he often — sometimes to the disgust and annoyance of Mr. Sew- 
ard — advised on controverted or disputed international ques- 
tions, and especially when there were differences between him- 
self and the Secretary of State."— Lincoln and Seward, p. 185. 
Pierce asserts: "Such was his confidence in Sumner's judg- 
ment that he sometimes struck out passages from the Secretary's 



254 CHARLES SUMNER 

debate upon the question, which might embarrass 
the administration. On Christmas Day Lincoln 
called a special meeting of his cabinet, not to ex- 
change holiday greetings but to consider anxiously 
the issue of i)eace or war. To this grave council 
Sumner also was bidden ; he took part in its delib- 
erations, and read letters relating to the seizure, 
which he had just received from America's best 
friends in England, Cobden and Bright. 1 No doubt 
remained that the act of Wilkes must be disavowed. 
The very next day Seward informed the British 
minister, with suitable expressions of regret, that 
the envoys would be given up, and the incident, so 
far as it involved any threat of war, was closed. 8 

But among the people at large the affair left a 
feeling of humiliation that the American govern- 
ment should have disavowed and apologized for a 
brave act of undoubtedly patriotic intent, which 
had been everywhere hailed with delight. In 
avoiding war with England, the administration had 

despatches to which the senator objected." Vol. IV, p. 52, 
11. 4. Lincoln used often to consult Sumner "as the barometer 
of the nation's conscience." — G. S. Merriam, Life and Times of 
Samuel Bowles, Vol. I, p. 346. 

'Sumner did not doubt that the refusal to give up the envoys 
would mean war with England, the disastrous consequences of 
which he clearly forecast -in his letter to Lieberof December 24th. 
Pierce, Vol. VI, p. 58. Of great importance is the painstaking 
account of the '' Trent affair " in Rhodes, Vol. Ill, pp. 521-543, 
with its extensive ({notations from letters of Bright and Cobden 
and Sumner, and from leaders in English newspapers. 

2 How reluctantly even the President accepted the necessity 
of releasing the envoys is indicated by quotations from Bates's 
diary in Xicolav and Hay, Vol. V, p. 36. See also Bancroft's 
Life of Seward, Vol. II, p. 235-253. 



WAE PKOBLEMS 255 

chilled loyalty at home. 1 Two weeks later, accord- 
ingly, when the correspondence in regard to the 
>k Trent Affair" was under discussion in the Senate, 
Sumner made a tactful and comprehensive speech. 
While tacitly exposing some of Seward's grave 
errors iu international law, he not only explained 
aud justified the surrender on the ground that since 
the envoys were not in military service, neither 

*Mr. Frederic Bancroft frankly acknowledges that at first 
Seward did not know that Wilkes's act was contrary to inter- 
national law. He characterizes his final reply to Earl Russell 
as "the most studied aud elaborately adroit paper that ever 
came from Seward's pen." Its full text is to be found in Sen. 
Ex. Doc. No. 8, 37th Cong., 2d Sess. By vague and disjointed 
citations from authorities in international law, by "assuming 
an analogy where there was none, aud then using his false as- 
sumption to support his contention," Seward "made it appear 
that Mason and Slidell were contraband of war, and that there- 
fore Wilkes was justified in capturing them " ; but he declared 
that "by releasing the Trent instead of bringing her into port 
for judical examination and condemnation, Wilkes let slip the 
only chance of obtaining a legal justification for the seizure." 
He even had the "sheer impudence " — as Bancroft calls it — to 
assert that " if the safety of this Union required the detention 
of the captured persons, it would be the right and duty of this 
government to detain them." — a pretense very consoling to 
public sentiment in America, for which it was mainly intended, 
but which Earl Russell, in his reply, indicated Great Britain 
would under no circumstances have tolerated. Bancroft dis- 
cusses at length the "remarkable absurdities" involved in 
Seward's course, particularly in his subordination of the princi- 
ples aud steady practice of the United States, "which favored in- 
creasing the rights of neutrals and restricting belligerent inter- 
ference," and in his now resting his whole argument on the 
fact that the Confederates were belligerents, "after constant 
declarations, during eight months, that they were not belliger- 
ents, but insurgents. " 

In politician's fashion, he made the release which had been 
shown to be inevitable. But the judgment of Hamilton Fish 
is not too severe : " We might and should have turned the 



256 CHAKLES SUMNER 

they nor their papers were contraband of war or 
liable to seizure, but he went further and laid much 
stress upon the point that the seizure had been in 
violation of long-declared American principles, 
while in resenting it Great Britain had rejected her 
own precedents. 1 In the words of George William 
Curtis : " He had silenced England by her historic 
self. He had justified America by her own honor- 
able precedent. " In a letter to Bright, written on 

affair vastly to our credit and advantage ; it has been made the 
means of oar humiliation." Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 54. The situa- 
tion from the outset had been made more strained by the be- 
lief prevalent in England that Seward was hostile in his attitude 
toward that country, and not to be trusted. Cobden wrote to 
Sumner: "I confess I have as little confidence in him as I 
have in Lord Palm erston. Both will consult buncombe for the 
moment without much regard, I fear, for the future." In 
citing these words, Mr. Rhodes adds: "We may, I think, ac- 
cept as faithful this characterization.'' Vol. Ill, p. 533. Years 
later, J. M. Forbes wrote to Sumner : "History, I am sure, 
will give the verdict that we got through without foreign in- 
tervention not in consequence of Seward's management but in 
spite of it. His foreign policy was as short-sighted, empirical, 
and unstatesmanlike as his sixty-day compromising, wood- 
cocking home policy. But for the present ' nil nisi bonitm ' must 
I suppose be the word about the wiley secretary." April 17, 
1869. Sumner Correspondence, Harvard Library. 

1 Blaine dissents strongly from the grounds upon which Seward 
placed the surrender of Mason and Slidell, and declares : "The 
luminous speech of Mr. Sumner . . . stated the ground 
for which the United States had always contended with ad- 
mirable precision." He shows clearly how flagrant and fre- 
quent had been England's offenses against the principles for 
which she now contended. — Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. I, 
pp. 5H5-587. 

Although the Foreign Secretary, Earl Russell, made prompt 
demand that "the seizure be disavowed, and the prisoners set 
free and restored to British protection," there is evidence that 
this official despatch did not represent the private opinion of 
Lord Palmerston, the Prime Minister. It had been anticipated 



WAK PKOBLEMS 257 

the very day of the speech, Sumner frankly ac- 
knowleged that he had perhaps overemphasized this 
point, but added: "My earnest desire was to do 
something for peace ; but I was obliged to arouse 
the patriotism and self-respect of my own country- 
men by associating the surrender with American 
principles." Sumner's influence had undoubtedly 



that an attempt might be made in the British Channel to seize 
the envoys, and on November 11th, before it was known in 
England that the seizure had already been made on the other 
side of the Atlantic, the Prime Minister and six other promi- 
nent officers of the government came together to determine 
what the British government could properly do in such an event. 
In a letter to J. T. Delaue, editor of the London Times, on the 
very day of this conference, Lord Palmerston explains the con- 
clusion to which they came : " Much to my regret, it appeared 
that, according to the principles of international law laid down 
in our courts by Lord Stowell, and practiced by us, a belliger- 
ent has a right to stop and search any neutral not being a ship 
of war, and being found on the high seas and being suspected 
of carrying enemy's despatches; and that consequently this 
American cruiser might, by our own principles of international 
law, stop the West India packet, search her, and if the South- 
ern men and their despatches and credentials were found on 
board, either take them out or seize the packet and carry her 
back to New York for trial. Such being the opinion of our 
men learned in the law, we have determined to do no more 
than to order the Phaeton frigate to drop down to Yarmouth 
Roads and watch the proceedings of the American within our 
three mile limit of territorial jurisdiction, and to prevent her 
from exercising within that limit those rights which we cannot 
dispute as belonging to her beyond that limit.* 1 

This is a strikingly frank avowal that the act for which his 
ministry was about to demand reparation (probably out of re- 
gard for popular sentiment in England, which had been en- 
raged by the seizure) was indisputably justified by English 
precept and practice ; and that these British precedents (as soon 
proved in the Alabama controversy) were likely to prove much 
in need of reversal. This letter is reprinted in full in Outlook 
(N. Y.), Jan. 30, 1909, p. 251. t 



258 CHAKLES SUMNEK 

been the most potent both iu effecting a peaceful 
solution and in reconciling the American people to 
the inevitable surrender. His strong and intelligent 
handling of this difficult case, in which impulse and 
ignorance of international law had threatened such 
momentous consequences, greatly increased his 
prestige, particularly with the conservative classes, 
heretofore inclined to distrust him. Publicists of 
eminence warmly commended his speech. It was 
declared " the best thing for Sumner's popularity 
and reputation he has done." The address had had 
no more unprejudiced or keenly interested listeners 
than the representatives of foreign governments who 
thronged the diplomatic gallery in the Senate. Said 
one of the most accomplished of those diplomats : 
"I have considered Mr. Sumner a doctrinaire; 
henceforth I recognize him as a statesman.' ' l 

During the summer of 1862 not a week passed that 
Sumner did not call once or more upon the Presi- 
dent to urge him to move directly against slavery ; 2 
he insisted that the putting forth of an edict of 
emancipation on the Fourth of July would make the 
day more sacred and historic than ever. Lincoln 
replied : "I would do it, if I were not afraid that 
half the officers would fling down their arms and 
three more states would rise." He told Sumner 

1 G. W. Curtis, Eulogy of Sumner, p. 162. 

8 " Many a time I saw Sumner restlessly pacing up and down 
in his room and exclaiming with uplifted hands : ' I pray that 
the President may he right in delaying. But I am afraid, lam 
almost sure, he is not. I trust his fidelity, hut I cannot under- 
stand him.' " — Carl Schurz, Bemiriiscences, Vol. II, p. 314. 



WAR PROBLEMS 259 

early in the session : "You are only a month or 
six weeks ahead of me." Sumner repeatedly de- 
clared himself so opposed to war that he never 
would have favored beginning a conflict for the 
abolition of slavery, but from the time when the 
South brought it on, his conviction never could be 
shaken that the war could not end and ought not to 
end without ending slavery also. Lincoln, with his 
graver responsibilities, saw more clearly than did 
Sumner the necessity of proceeding with caution, 
particularly with a view to retaining the loyalty of 
the border states. During the session he discussed 
with Sumner his favorite scheme for gradual and 
voluntary abolition, with compensation from the 
national treasury. Sumner frankly avowed his dis- 
trust of the practicability of the measure, but he did 
not antagonize it in the Senate. Meantime the 
President was coming to the view which Sumner 
had long been urging upon him, and September 22d 
— probably as early as it was justified — he issued 
the Proclamation of Emancipation, which was to be- 
come effective on New Year's Day in the states still 
in revolt. No man in the country had done more 
than Sumner to prepare public sentiment to approve 
and to support this vitally important act. 

Upon two diplomatic negotiations relating to 
slavery Sumner exercised great influence. The first 
of these was the treaty between the United States 
and England, which made effective the suppression 
of the slave-trade by the institution of a mutual 
right of search and mixed courts. Sumner was 



260 CHARLES SUMNER 

present when the treaty was signed, and upon his 
speech, accompanying the report from his com- 
mittee, the Senate ratified it without dissent. Both 
Seward and the British minister were exultant, and 
highly appreciative of Sumner' s cooperation. After 
much opposition, he was able to effect the passage of 
a bill for the accrediting of representatives from the 
United States to Hayti and to Liberia ; ' a few years 
later he was instrumental in securing similar diplo- 
matic recognition of the Dominican Republic. 

In this session Sumner for the first time was able 
to see some progress made along lines of legislation 
against slavery which he was incessantly urgiug. 
One such law embodied his proposal that the em- 
ployment of the army in the surrender of fugitive 
slaves be prohibited. The session had hardly be- 
gun, when he attacked the slave code of the District 
of Columbia. This, "the first open word against 
slavery in the District since the break-out of the re- 
bellion," was intended to help toward its abolition 
in the shadow of the Capitol, and such a result was 
accomplished before the end of the session by a law 
of which Wilson was the especial champion. The 
President felt doubtful as to certain provisions of 
this bill ; while he was hesitating whether to sign it 

1 Ten years later his continued services to Hayti were recog- 
nized by the award of a medal, and an order that his portrait be 
placed in its Capitol. In a courteous letter Sumner expressed 
his appreciation of this recognition, but declined to accept the 
medal, on the ground that it was not permitted under the Con- 
stitution. The Haytian authorities accordingly presented it to 
the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, and it is now deposited in 
the state library. 



WAK PROBLEMS 261 

or not, Sumner said to him : " Do you know who 
at this moment is the largest slave- holder in this 
country % It is Abraham Lincoln ; for he holds all 
the 3,000 slaves of the District, which is more than 
any other person in the country holds." Sunnier 
seized every opportunity to advocate the repeal of 
the Fugitive Slave Law. He both spoke and voted 
against the bill by which the state of West Virginia 
was established, his opposition being grounded on 
the fact that that law provided for gradual instead 
of immediate emancipation. 1 

It was during this session that Sumner began two 
contests which were to absorb most of his energies 
for the rest of his life. The first of these was his 
struggle to secure for all citizens of the United States, 
regardless of color, equality of civic rights. His 
present project was to make it possible for colored 
persons to act as witnesses in Federal courts and as 
carriers of the mail. The second subject which he 
thus early was one of the first to urge upon the at- 
tention of Congress, was the problem of reconstruc- 
tion. On February 11, 1862, he introduced a series 
of resolutions in which he declared that the seceded 
states " had abdicated all rights under the Constitu- 
tion," or, as he phrased it a little later, had com- 
mitted " state suicide." 2 This celebrated doctrine 

1 Wade and other radical anti-slavery men voted against 
Sumner on this issue. Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. I, 
p. 461. 

2 " Call it suicide, if you will, or suspended animation, or 
abeyance, — they have practically ceased to exist." Speech in 
Senate, May 19, 1862. Works, Vol. VII, p. 14. McPherson, 
History of the Rebellion, pp. 322-323. 



262 CHARLES SUMNER 

as to the status of the states in revolt was promptly 
disavowed by prominent Republican leaders in Con- 
gress, but it was to play a most important part in 
debates and legislation of later years. A few weeks 
later he strongly asserted his view that the initia- 
tion and control of reconstruction should be by Con- 
gress and not by the President, and that at the in- 
stance of the President, the Secretary of War had no 
right to appoint military governors for seceded 
states. His opposition placed a check upon this 
practice, and led to the withdrawal of the offer of 
the military governorship of South Carolina to 
Sumner's intimate friend and biographer, Edward 
L. Pierce. 1 

Although Sumner was one of the most radical 
anti-slavery leaders in Congress, and although he 
regarded the rebellion, as he told Gladstone, as 
" slavery in arms, revoltiug, indecent, imperious," 
nevertheless he looked forward to a reunited coun- 
try, and took more magnanimous ground than any 
other man in Congress in proposals to prevent the 
perpetuation of bitternesses arising from the war. 
In this session he offered a resolution declaring it 
inexpedient that the names of victories won over 
fellow-citizens should be placed on the regimental 
colors of the United States, 2 and three years later he 
opposed hanging in the Capitol " any picture of a 
victory in battle with our own fellow-citizens." In 
both of these matters he was opposed by Wilson, 

1 Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 78, n. 3. 
3 Works, Vol. VI, p. 499. 



WAR PROBLEMS 263 

chairman of the Senate Committee on Military Af- 
fairs ; but Sumner's stand, taken in the midst of the 
stress of war, accords with the unanimous verdict of 
a later generation. In the general work of this his- 
toric session, Sumner took an active part, speaking 
with discriminating intelligence on a great variety 
of subjects, in particular the first of the legal tender 
acts and the internal revenue tax bill. As to the 
legal tender act, Sumner accepted the judgment of 
the Secretary of the Treasury that it was rendered 
imperative by the exigency of the hour, but added : 
" Reluctantly, painfully, I consent that the process 
should issue, and yet I cannot give such a vote with- 
out warning the government against the danger of 
such an experiment. The medicine of the Constitu- 
tion must not become its daily bread." l 

In the year 1862, for the only time in his career, 
Sumner's reelection to the Senate was seriously 
threatened. The causes were partly general and 
partly personal. The lack of success in prosecuting 
the war had reacted against the Republican admin- 
istration, so that a coalition of other party elements 
now stood some chance of making head. Many felt 
that the war was being made an u abolition war," 
and that Sumner's influence had been one of the 
greatest in giving it that direction. His " state 
suicide" theory had startled conservatives, and 
these added a small but earnest group to the oppo- 
sition. It was also charged that Sumner was so de- 
voted to anti-slavery projects that he did not attend 

1 Works, Vol. VI, pp 319-345. 



264 CHARLES SUMNER 

to the interests of the common wealth and of his con- 
stituents, — a charge which was easily and completely 
refuted. But no sooner did this movement to dis- 
place Sumner become apparent, than his supporters 
began to rally. "Jackson, Clay and Webster," 
says Pierce, "drew to themselves hosts of friends 
by their personal and intellectual qualities, but 
Sumner stands almost alone as a public man whose 
great support was the moral enthusiasm of the peo- 
ple." Hundreds of young voters were now coming 
to the polls whose first civic awakening and inspira- 
tion could be traced to Sumner's Lyceum lectures ; 
his speeches in the Senate and on the stump had 
been read at the fireside throughout the country ; 
while his fearless championship of freedom and the 
sufferings he had endured in her service appealed 
to the chivalrous loyalty of Massachusetts. 

It is singular that in two instances Sumner's elec- 
tion was determined by the use of political devices 
then highly exceptional, but which half a century 
later accord with the spirit of senatorial elections in 
the most radical states, in dictating from outside the 
choice of senator to be made by the legislature. In 
his first election this was brought about by town- 
meetings giving instructions to individual members 
to vote for Sumner. In 1862, his supporters re- 
solved to anticipate the election by securing his en- 
dorsement by the convention of the Republican party, 
which was sure to control the legislature. This 
making the senatorial election an issue before the 
convention was without precedent in New England, 



WAR PROBLEMS 265 

though the device had attracted attention as a pre- 
liminary to the memorable Lincoln-Douglas cam- 
paign in Illinois j in recent years it has reduced the 
election of senators by the legislatures to a mere 
formality in most of the Southern states. 

In this convention of 1862 the contest came over 
a resolution expressing approval of the work of 
both Massachusetts senators, and putting Sumner in 
nomination for reelection as " a statesman, a scholar, 
a patriot and a man of whom any republic in any age 
might be proud. ' ' At every step this resolution was 
antagonized, in committee and upon the floor of the 
convention, the lead being taken by the United 
States District- Attorney, an exceptionally able man- 
ager of political meetings ; but the attempt to defeat 
it failed, and the convention finally adopted the 
whole series of resolutions unanimously. Despite 
this authoritative endorsement by the party, it was 
thought best that Sumner enter actively into the cam- 
paign. The preliminary Emancipation Proclama- 
tion was issued within a fortnight after the holding 
of this convention. Scorning prudential consider- 
ations, which would have kept the slavery issue in 
the background, Sumner made this proclamation his 
main theme, in speeches delivered before great au- 
diences in the principal cities of the commonwealth. 
Vigorous support was forthcoming from Whittier 
and Phillips, while Greeley's leaders in the Tribune 
emphasized the vast importance to the whole country 
of the senator's reelection. This attempt to banish 
Sumner from public life came to nothing : the legis- 



266 CHAKLES SUMNER 

lature carried out the convention's mandate by giv- 
ing him a vote of 227 to 47 for all other candidates. 
At the reopening of Congress, Sumner took a quite 
prominent part in the movement of Republican 
senators to persuade Lincoln to dismiss from his 
cabinet Seward, who, in his diplomatic correspond- 
ence, had refused to recognize slavery as a cause 
of the war or as likely to be affected by its outcome, 
and who was thought to have been obstructionist 
in his attitude toward emancipation. His culmi- 
nating offense was a passage in a diplomatic des- 
patch to Adams, which had recently come to light. 
A committee of nine, appointed by the Republican 
caucus, waited upon the President to urge him to 
11 reconstruct his cabinet." To their embarrass- 
ment, at their second conference, the committee 
found that Lincoln had invited the cabinet to 
meet with them. After prolonged discussion, when 
Lincoln asked, " Do you, gentlemen, still think that 
Seward ought to be excused % " despite his many 
years of intimacy with the secretary and his family, 
Sumner joined with Grimes, Trumbull and Pomeroy 
in answering, "Yes"; three declined to commit 
themselves, one opposed the proposal, and one was 
absent. The outcome was that Chase, whose dislike 
and jealousy of Seward's influence had been ill-con- 
cealed, now found himself in an exceedingly embar- 
rassing position, and added his resignation to Sew- 
ard's, which was already in the President's hands. 
" I can ride on now ; I've got a pumpkin in each 
end of my bag," was Lincoln's comment to a friend. 



WAK PEOBLEMS 267 

He prevailed upon both secretaries to resume their 
positions, but he now held the factions of his cab- 
inet in control, aud he had accomplished this with- 
out establishing what might have proved a most 
unfortunate precedent, if he had yielded to the pres- 
sure of the senatorial caucus for the expulsion of 
an unpopular secretary. ' 

In midsummer, 1863, Sumner was rejoiced that 
one policy which he had urged from the beginning 
of the war was put into effect in the enlistment of 
negro volunteers. On the same day was passed an 
act for the confiscation of the real and personal 
estate of rebels. Sumner's only interest in this was 
as a step toward emancipation and the providing 
of homes for the colored people. 2 

Throughout the war, Sumner rendered invaluable 
service to the Union as chairman of the Senate 
Committee on Foreign Eelations. Early in this 
session (January, 1863), when a resolution was in- 
troduced condemning French intervention in Mexico, 
Sumner opposed it vigorously as most ill-timed, 
calculated to involve us in war with a power which 

Bancroft, Life of Seward, Vol. II, pp. 364-369; Nicolay and 
Hay, Abraham Lincoln, Vol. VI, pp. 263-272 ; Welles, Lincoln and 
Seward, pp. 81-85; Pierce, Vol. IV, pp. 110-111, especially p. 
Ill, n. 3, which summarizes Sumner's relations to the several 
members of Lincoln's cabinet. In the account of this episode 
in his Diary, Gideon Welles wrote: " Grimes, Sumner and 
Trumbull were pointed, emphatic and unequivocal in their op- 
position to Mr. Seward, whose zeal and sincerity they doubted. 
Each was unrelenting: and unforgiving." Dec. 20, 1862. At- 
lantic Monthly, April, 1909, p 474. 

2 Act of July 17, 1862. Pierce, Vol. IV, pp. 75-77; Blaine, 
Vol. I, pp. 373-375. 



268 CHABLES SUMNER 

still professed friendship, and sure to give aid and 
comfort to the enemy at home, who was clearly 
taxing all the nation's powers. The resolution was 
then tabled by a decisive vote. But a year later its 
mover renewed it in more peremptory form, requir- 
ing the withdrawal of the French troops within 
three months. This was referred to Sumner's com- 
mittee, and here he succeeded in keeping it buried, 
despite repeated efforts by its mover to get it before 
the Senate. In the House the corresponding com- 
mittee was headed by Henry Winter Davis, who 
ardently supported a resolution which the House 
adopted by unanimous vote, denouncing "any 
monarchical government erected on the ruins of any 
republican government in America, under the au- 
spices of any European power." In the Senate this 
was referred to Sumner's committee, and there it 
was kept in innocuous confinement. But the pas- 
sage of this resolution by the House had already 
given offense : demands for an explanation were 
made both by the French minister at Washington 
and by the Minister of Foreign Affairs at Paris. Sew- 
ard's replies affronted the dignity of the House and 
of Davis in particular, who proceeded to introduce 
another equally dangerous resolution, which passed 
the House by a narrow majority, only to be smoth- 
ered, like its predecessor, by Sumner's committee. 
In February, 1863, a bill for the granting of let- 
ters of marque and reprisal was brought forward, 
backed by the cordial support of Seward and Chase. 
Sumner opposed it vigorously as countenancing a pol- 



WAR PROBLEMS 269 

icy which civilization had rejected, and likely in its 
working to embroil us with foreign powers. The bill 
passed both Houses and became a law to the great sat- 
isfaction of both Seward and Chase. Indeed, " Sew- 
ard felt this to be something of a triumph over Mr. 
Sumner, who often came in conflict with his views, 
and in allusion to whom, when confronted as he 
sometimes was by the President with the senator's 
opinions, he remarked, ' There were too many Sec- 
retaries of State in Washington. ' " l Nevertheless, 
Sumner's opposition did not end. He appealed to 
the President, addressed an open letter to the New 
York Board of Trade, and sent leaders to some of 
the principal papers. Lincoln suggested that he 
address the cabinet, but Sumner deemed it more 
becoming that he discuss the matter with them indi- 
vidually. The Secretary of the Navy and several 
others adopted Sumner's view ; the Presideut sum- 
moned him to a conference where they went over 
the whole matter of privateering reprisals. It is 
Welles's testimony that this interview, together 
with a conference between the President and him- 
self in regard to the only application which had 
been filed under the act, " terminated the priva- 
teering policy, and closed the subject of letters of 
marque and reprisal during the rebellion." 

The hope that foreign nations, particularly France 
or England, would intervene, was a constant en- 
couragement to the Southern leaders, and Sumner, 

1 Welles, Lincoln and Seward, p. 154. 
9 Ibid., pp. 145-164. 



270 CHARLES SUMNER 

with the purpose of doing " something to lift the 
tone of our foreign relations," now determined that 
the attitude of the United States toward such inter- 
vention ought to be made clear. After much diffi- 
culty he succeeded in carrying through his com- 
mittee a series of resolutions which declared foreigu 
mediation unreasonable and inadmissible in domestic 
controversies ; asserted that any effort by a foreign 
government to hinder the suppression of the rebel- 
lion was an encouragement of it, and if repeated 
would be considered an unfriendly act ; attributed 
to the hope of foreign intervention the vitality of 
the rebellion ; and deplored the fact that the leaders 
of the revolt had not been given to understand by 
foreign powers that a new government, u with 
slavery as its acknowledged corner-stone, and with 
no other declared object of sex>arate existence, is so 
far shocking to the moral sense of mankind that it 
must not expect welcome or recognition in the com- 
monwealth of nations. 1 ' ! These resolutions, pro- 
nounced by Lieber " one of the most collected, most 
faultless of historical documents," 2 were adopted by 
large majorities in both Houses, and transmitted to 
our ministers abroad for communication to the 
governments to which they were accredited. 

But Sumner's influence in behalf of peace and 
friendly feeling with England was exerted not more 
in his official capacity as chairman of the Committee 
on Foreigu Relations, than in his private correspond - 

1 Passed March 3, 18G3. Works, Vol. VII, pp. 307-312. 
a Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 124. 



WAR PROBLEMS 271 

ence with the leaders of English thought. It was a 
bitter disappointment to him that many of the men 
of eminence — scholars, philanthropists and states- 
men, whom he had come to love — now sided with the 
South or were without faith that the North could 
succeed. But in John Bright and Richard Cobden 
he found stanch supporters of the Union. And they 
recognized in Sumner the fitting avenue of com- 
munication between the friends of freedom in the 
two lands. Early in the war Cobden had written to 
Bright : "I doubt whether another year's blockade 
will be borne by the world. What say you ! If 
you agree, you should let Sumner know." ' Their 
letters to him were full of light upon changing 
public sentiment in England and warnings as to acts 
which might alienate it ; they ranked with Adams's 
despatches as guides in cabinet discussions regard- 
ing our relations with England. In his letters to 
these British statesmen and also to the Duchess of 
Argyll, whose husband was in the cabinet, Sumner 
reported the changing conditions of the struggle and 
the progress in anti-slavery sentiment and legisla- 
tion. Nor did he fail to make clear to his cor- 
respondents how deeply Americans resented the 
British government's laxness in enforcing neutrality. 
He declared that our commerce was about "to be 
driven from the ocean by ships in which every 
plank and rope, and every arm, from the knife to 
the cannon and the crew, are British, and nothing 
but the pirate officers rebels " ; he pointed out that 
1 December 6, 1861. Quoted by Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 51. 



272 CHAELES SUMNER 

in allowing such a flagrant breach of neutrality 
England was laying down precedents which could 
not fail to be most disastrous to her in future years : 
" A leading merchant said to me this morning that 
he would give $50,000 for a war between England 
and Eussia, that he might turn England's doctrines 
against England." In his letters as in his speeches, 
Sumner took every opportunity to identify the re- 
bellion with slavery, and "slave-mongers" was the 
epithet which with wearisome iteration he applied 
to the Southerners. His object was to heap 
ignominy upon the cause which underlay the at- 
tack upon the Union. He especially deplored Earl 
EusselFs " hard, curt, captious, and cynical " des- 
patches, and his statement that the Union and its 
opponents "were contending, as so many of the 
states of the Old World have contended, the one 
side for empire and the other for independence." 
This thesis Gladstone adopted, declaring so often 
and with such apparent satisfaction his belief that 
the restoration of the American Union by force was 
unattainable that Sumner protested: "Opinions 
are allies more potent than subsidies. . . . 
Nothing is more clear than that whoever assumes to 
play prophet becomes pledged in character and pre- 
tension to sustain his prophecy." ! The Proclama- 
tion of Emancipation and the victories at Vieksburg 
and Gettysburg produced a noticeable change for 
the better in British public opinion toward the 

1 Address, New York, September 10, 1803. Work*, Vol. VII, 
pp. 351-352. 



WAR PROBLEMS 273 

North, but Gladstone, even in the winter of 1SG3-4, 
declared in a letter to Sumner that from the first of the 
war his opiniou had remained absolutely the same. 1 

On the evening of September 10, 1863, before an 
audience of 3,000 in the Cooper Institute, — from 
whose doors as many more had been turned away, 
— Sumner delivered an address on ' ' Our Foreign 
Relations." The occasion for this intense interest 
was not far to seek. The Florida and the Alabama 
were already at large, preying upon our commerce, 
and other cruisers and rams were building in British 
yards. The French emperor was known to be ur- 
ging intervention upon an apparently not unwilling 
British cabinet. Despite his well-known friendship 
for England and the English, Sumner's speech 
seemed primarily an indictment of the British 
government for such sins of omission and commis- 
sion as he had been pointing out in his letters to 
Bright and Cobden. He laid especial emphasis on 
" the impossibility in a civilized age of recognizing 
a new power openly proclaiming this barbarism 
[slavery] as its corner-stone," and argued at length 
against a government's being entitled to belligerent 
rights on the ocean, when it had no access to prize- 
courts, but always burned its captured ships, and 
none of whose cruisers ever touched a port of the 
pretended government. 2 

Sumner intended this speech for a far larger 

1 The frankness of Gladstone's acknowledgment of his mis- 
takes of judgment and of speech goes far to disarm criticism. 
Morley, Life of Gladstone, Vol. II, p. 82. 

9 Works, Vol. VII, pp. 327-392. 



274 CHAKLES SUMNER 

audience than that which he faced, 1 — for the 
American public, before whom no comprehensive 
presentation of the subject had been placed, and for 
British statesmen, that they might be warned for 
the future by seeing how deeply British lack of 
sympathy and remissness in neutrality had offended 
Americans most friendly toward England. In 
America the address met with wide-spread ap- 
proval. In England it gave deep distress to some 
friends of Sumner and of the cause which he repre- 
sented, and was criticized as grossly indiscrimiua- 
ting and unjust. It is true that the speech did not 
take into account the self-sacrificing sympathy of 
the great working-classes and of many English 
leaders of thought : its censures were directed 
against England as represented by the government 
which had allowed the Alabama to escape. It was 
felt, too, that Sumner made a serious mistake and 
did injustice in bringing his indictment against 

1 Blaine notes this detachment from his immediate audience 
as characteristic of Sumner in many of his speeches. "He pre- 
sented his arguments with power, hut they were laborious 
essays. He had no faculty for extempore speech. Like Addi- 
son/ he could draw his draft for a thousand pounds, but might 
not have a shilling for change. . . . His written arguments 
were the anti-slavery classics of the day, and they were read 
more eagerly than speeches which produced greater effect on 
the hearer. Colonel Benton said that the eminent William 
Pinckney of Maryland was always thinking of the few hundred 
who came to hear him in the Senate chamber, apparently for- 
getting the million who might read him outside. Mr. Sumner 
never made that mistake. His arguments went to the million. 
They produced a wide-spread and prodigious effect ou public 
opinion and left an indelible impression on the history of the 
country." — Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. I, p. 318. 



WAR PROBLEMS 276 

England and France together, since the British 
government had not taken the initiative toward in- 
tervention, but had thus far resisted the pressure 
of the French emperor. But the difficulties of the 
moment were from England. Again, Sumner was 
criticized for insisting that foreign countries must 
discriminate against the Confederate states because 
their government was based upon slavery. In so 
doing, Sumner was following his usual practice of 
appealing to a higher law, regardless of whether its 
behests had been recognized in the currently ac- 
cepted law of nations. 

But the turning-point with the British ministry 
had already been reached. Two days before Sum- 
ner launched these reproaches, Earl Russell had in- 
formed the American minister that instructions had 
been issued that no more Confederate cruisers or 
rams should be allowed to depart from British ports. 
Nevertheless, in spite of all the friction it caused, 
it cannot be doubted that Sumner's speech served 
as a salutary warning that past British remissness 
had not gone unnoticed and that its continuance 
would seriously imperil peace between the two 
countries. Sumner's own avowal to Lieber was : 
"On my conscience, after a constant and minute 
correspondence on all topics of my speech, I felt 
that the time had come when the case should be 
stated to England by a friend who meant peace and 
not war. My speech was a warning, with a plead- 
ing for peace." But Sumner was not always a good 
judge of the conciliatory effect of his own words. 



CHAPTEB XIV 

SUMNER AND LINCOLN 

In the session which opened in December, 1863, 
Suinuer aroused some antagouism by forcing 
through a Senate rule, requiring that members 
take the u iron -clad oath," ! and by his successful 
championship of a bill requiring this oath of all 
attorneys appearing in Federal courts. The old 
charge was renewed, that Sumner himself had had 
" treason in his heart and on his lips" in taking 
the oath, while avowing that he would not assist in 
the rendition of fugitive slaves. 

At this session also, on Simmer's motion, there 
was constituted a special Committee on Slavery and 
Freedmen, and he was made its chairman. To this 
committee was referred his bill for the repeal of all 
fugitive slave laws. This measure, which he had 
introduced almost as soon as he had entered the 
Senate twelve years before, and had repeatedly 
urged, still met with strong opposition, but Sumner 
now kept forcing this and other matters relating to 
freedmen upon the Senate with a persistence which 

'This oath, prescribed by Act of Congress of July 2. 1862, re- 
quired all persons in the civil and military service of the United 
States to affirm past loyalty as well as to pledge future allegiance 
to the government. Democratic senators had heretofore de- 
clined to take this oath, declaring that it did not apply to mem- 
bers of Congress. Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 175. 



SUMNER AND LINCOLN 277 

called from Saulsbury of Delaware the impatient 
wish that the Senate might have ' ' one day without 
the nigger." At last, after a struggle of five 
months, success crowned his efforts. So far as 
practical effect upon the return of fugitives was 
concerned, this belated repeal was not of much con- 
sequence, but Sumner deemed it of immense im- 
portance abroad ; in fact, within a few weeks Earl 
Eussell had stated in the House of Lords that the 
retention of the Fugitive Slave Act repelled sym- 
pathy for the Union cause. 

Other measures connected with slavery which 
Sumner was largely instrumental in passing were 
the abolition of the coastwise slave-trade ; the es- 
tablishment — though for but a limited term of one 
year — of a Freedinan's Bureau, and a prohibition 
of exclusions from street-railway cars in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia on account of color j and — what 
he deemed of greatest importance — a law pro- 
hibiting in all courts of the United States any dis- 
crimination against negroes as witnesses. It is 
characteristic of Sumner's attitude of mind that 
three of these measures were forced through only 
by his loading them as riders upon appropriation 
bills or as amendments of general character upon 
acts of special legislation. Of such transcendent 
importance did he deem this extension of the rights 
of the freedmen that he would hesitate not a mo- 
ment to make use of any legislative device, how- 
ever embarrassing it might later prove as a prec- 
edent. 



278 CHARLES SUMNER 

Negro suffrage now came under discussion, and 
Sumner joined earnestly with others in the exclusion 
of any suffrage discrimination on account of color in 
the act for the government of Montana Territory, 
making the issue one of principle rather than of im- 
mediate practical importance. 1 Against the judg- 
ment of many, including Wilson, he also made vig- 
orous though unsuccessful efforts to have the suffrage 
extended to colored persons in the District of Col- 
umbia. 

While on his way to Washington, Sumner drafted 
a form of petition for an amendment to the Con- 
stitution, declaring that "slavery shall be forever 
prohibited within the limits of the United States." 
This form of petition, adopted a few days later at 
the meeting of the American Anti-slavery Society, 
is said to have been the first public step toward the 
Thirteenth Amendment, which at this session was 
approved by the Senate though not by the House. 
Sumner, of course, was one of its most ardent advo- 
cates. He fought hard, but in vain, to secure a 
phrasing of the Amendment which would not imply 
any sanction of slavery even as a punishment for 
crime. 3 In the debate over this measure, his expres- 

1 As a matter of fact, it is declared that there was not at the 
time a single negro in Montana. In the words of a witty 
Southerner, " The whole controversy over the territories related 
to an imaginary negro in an impossible place." 

2 The form which he proposed in the Senate, February 8, 
l y 64, was as follows: ''Everywhere within the limits of the 
United States and of each state or territory thereof, all persons 
are equal before the law, so that no person can hold another as 
a slave.'' 



SUMNER AND LINCOLN 279 

sion, " Nothing against slavery can be unconstitu- 
tional," showed the temper in which he always ap- 
proached legal questions. It was from the stand- 
point of the idealist rather than of the jurist. 

In pushing forward these anti-slavery bills Sum- 
ner showed a pertinacity which exacted acknowl- 
edgment of his power, but did not tend to make 
him liked by his colleagues. Upon a measure which 
many at first distrusted, he would keep forcing them 
to put themselves upon record, until at last his im- 
portunity or their fear of popular sentiment brought 
them to yield. To the question whether such nag- 
ging persistency would prove good policy, Sumner's 
reply would have been the words he used at one 
stage in these debates : " The main proposition is to 
strike slavery wherever you can hit it." 

Yet he did not neglect topics of a more general 
interest. It was at this session that he made a most 
exhaustive report upon the " French Spoliation 
Claims,' ' which had been urged upon Congress for 
sixty years, and strongly advocated a bill for their 
payment. Four times, at later sessions, this report 
was adopted or reprinted as the authoritative sum- 
ming up of the case, before Congress at last, in 1885, 
authorized the payment of the claims. 1 Sumner an- 
ticipated public sentiment by introducing, on April 
30, 1864, a bill to provide for a system of competi- 
tive examinations for minor offices in the civil serv- 
ice, and for the prohibition of removals except for 

fierce, Vol. IV, pp. 187-188. Actual payments began in 
1891, 



280 CHARLES SUMNER 

good cause. This was the beginning of the move- 
ment in Congress for the reform of the civil service. 
Sumner had matured the measure without consult- 
ing other senators ; he was so convinced that it 
could not be passed in this crowded session that he 
himself moved that it be laid upon the table, and he 
was too engrossed with other cares to call it up. 
But he had long believed that rotation in office, 
while justifiable in political posts, was absurd in the 
machinery of administration and was convinced that 
the reform which he proposed would have a bene- 
ficial effect on our national credit and everywhere 
else. He was both surprised and gratified at the 
favorable comments which his bill called forth from 
friends and from some of the leading papers. 

Upon the approach of the presidential campaign 
of 1864, Sumner shared the opinion of perhaps the 
majority of public men (who in a few months were 
to be the President's eulogists) that Lincoln lacked 
practical talent for his position of transcendent im- 
portance, and that in the presidency " there should 
be more readiness and also more capacity for govern- 
ment." But he took no part in the many confer- 
ences looking toward the substitution of another 
candidate, repeatedly affirming that nothing could 
be done except with Lincoln's good- will. He put 
on record some strange judgments, which he himself 
must soon have repudiated. To Cobden on Septem- 
ber 18, 1864, he wrote : "If he [Lincoln] had pa- 
triotically withdrawn, and given his support to any 
nominee of a new convention, whoever he might be, 



SUMNER AND LINCOLN 281 

— any one of a hundred names, — I am very sure the 
nominee would be elected. . . . The President 
made a great mistake in compelling him [Chase] to 
resign. It was very much as when Louis XVI. 
threw overboard Necker, — and, by the way, I have 
often observed that Mr. Lincoln resembles Louis 
XVI. more than any other ruler in history. I once 
said to Chase that I should not be astonished if, like 
Necker, he was recalled ; to which he replied, 
1 That might be if Mr. Lincoln were king and not 
politician.' n ! 

But as soon as the Democratic platform was made 
public, with its assertion that the war had been 
" four years of failure," Sumner declared that " all 
opposition to Lincoln disappears at the promulga- 
tion of the Chicago treason," and in many speeches 
he did stalwart service to secure the President's re- 
election. While the campaign was still in progress, 
there came an interesting illustration of Lincoln's 
magnanimity, when Taney's death, for months an- 
ticipated as imminent, made vacant the chief -justice- 
ship of the Supreme Court. Early in the year Sum- 
ner had urged Chase's name upon the President as 
the best appointment. But meantime Lincoln had 
forced Chase to withdraw from the cabinet. Never- 
theless, both by letter and by personal interview, 
Sumner now renewed his advocacy of Chase's ap- 
pointment, which, after some delay, was made. 
Soon after the new Chief Justice had taken his seat, 
Sumner found intense satisfaction in moving the 
1 Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 200. 



282 CHAKLES SUMNER 

admission of a certain colored lawyer as counselor 
before the tribunal where Taney had pronounced 
the decision which denied citizenship to men of his 
race. This Dred Scott Decision seemed to Sumner 
such an atrocity that he joined with other sena- 
tors in temporarily successful opposition to the 
placing of a bust of Taney in the chamber of the Su- 
preme Court. l 

Sumner brought himself into strange company by 
his earnest opposition to the resolution reported 
from the Committee on Military Affairs for the es- 
tablishment of retaliation in kind upon Confederate 
prisoners of war. He did not deny that retaliation 
was a recognized right under the laws of war, but 
urged that such forms as virtual starvation and dep- 
rivation of necessary clothing and medicines, from 
which Union soldiers were alleged to have suffered 
in Southern prisons, could not be applied without 
grave deterioration of the national character. 

lr Thi8 bill, reported by Trumbull, called out angry debate 
from quite a number of senators. Surnuer declared that " Taney 
would be booted down the pages of history, and that an eman- 
cipated country would fix upon his name the stigma it deserved. 
He had administered justice wickedly, had degraded the judi- 
ciary, and had degraded the age." Reverdy Johnson eulogizt d 
Taney, and asserted that " the senator from Massachusetts will 
be happy if his name shall stand as high upon the historic page 
as that of the learned judge who is no mere." Nine years later, 
when all but Sumner of those who had spoken in these earlier 
debates had ceased to be members of the Senate, there was pre- 
sented a bill for conferring the same tribute of respect upon 
Taney and upon Chase, who had just died in tbe chief-justice 
ship; this was passed without debate and with the unanimous 
consent of the Senate. — Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 
1, pp. 135-137. 



SUMNER AND LINCOLN 283 

"Working with Democrats who were ordinarily his 
bitter opponents, Sumner was able to secure the 
Senate's assent to certain amendments requiring 
that the retaliation be in conformity with the laws 
and usages of warfare among civilized nations. 

The first year of the war was hardly past when 
the problem of reconstruction began to engage at- 
tention. Although the suppression of the insurrec- 
tion had proved a harder task than was anticipated, 
it was felt that if civil governments were speedily 
established in states which had come within Union 
control, they would serve as gathering-points for 
national sentiment, and would make a most favor- 
able impression upon public opinion abroad as an 
evidence that orderly democratic government was 
soon to be restored in the states which had been in 
revolt. 

Upon this problem Sumner was one of the first to 
put himself upon record, 1 and no other public man's 
attitude and influence had more to do with de- 
termining the course which reconstruction finally 
took. Hardly six months had passed since the dis- 
aster at Bull Run when Sumner, on February 11, 
1862, introduced a series of resolutions, the cardinal 
feature of which was his insistence that the de- 
termination of the procedure by which the seceded 
states should resume functions of government and 
be restored to normal relations with the Union, must 
rest with Congress. In his opinion the seceded 
states had virtually committed " state suicide," and 

1 Supra, pp. 261-262. 



284 CHARLES SUMKER 

it was now perfectly competent to Congress to make 
all rules and regulations for such territory as for 
any other territory or property of the United States. 1 

In the spring of 18G2 military governors were ap- 
pointed by the President for Louisiana, Arkansas, 
Tennessee, and North Carolina. Forthwith in 
Louisiana, in accordance with orders issued by this 
military governor, two representatives (Hahn and 
Flanders) were elected ; and upon their arrival in 
Washington the House of Representatives accepted 
their credentials and admitted them as members of 
the House, " though not without contention and 
misgiving." 2 In December, 1863, the President's 
message set forth his programme of reconstruction : 
State governments were to be established on the 
basis of one-tenth or more of the number of votes 
cast at the last national election, and voters were 
to be required to pledge themselves to allegiance to 
the Constitution and laws and the proclamations 
relating to slavery. During the next two months, 
in accordance with a proclamation of General 
Banks, the commander of the department, elections 
were held, the voting being confined to " male white 
citizens," a constitution was adopted and state of- 
ficers werechosen. In Arkansas the same procedure 
had been followed. 3 

In Congress these acts of the Executive met with 

•Constitution, Art. IV, Sec. Ill, Par. 2. 

8 Blaine, Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. II, p. 36. 

3 The character of the correspondence which led to these steps 
is indicated hv letters between Lincoln and Banks. Nicolay 
and Hay, Lincoln, Vol. VIII, pp. 427-430. 



SUMNER AND LINCOLN 285 

prompt protest, and the House soon passed a bill 
providing a method of reconstruction which differed 
from that of the President principally in its insist- 
ence that a majority, instead of merely one- tenth, 
of the white male citizens, of the age of twenty -one 
or over, should take the oath to support the Consti- 
tution of the United States before they could par- 
ticipate in initiating the state governments, and in 
the requirement that the new constitution of each 
state prohibit slavery forever. In both branches of 
Congress the attempt was made to cut out the re- 
striction of the suffrage to whites, but it failed, only 
five votes being cast in its support in the Senate. 
It is said that here for the last time Sumner was 
ready to waive his objection to such restriction of 
the suffrage, provided the bill asserting Congress's 
power to control reconstruction could be passed, 
together with a declaration that the Louisiana pro- 
cedure was no precedent and that freedom should 
be secured. But this bill the President killed by a 
pocket veto ; for he was firmly of the opinion that 
Congress had no authority to abolish slavery within 
the states, and he believed that the delicate adjust- 
ments of reconstruction could be better effected by 
one man than by from two to three hundred men in 
two jealous branches of Congress. 1 

In June, 1864, the concrete question came before 
the Senate on a resolution to recognize the govern- 

1 Proclamation of July 8, 1864. The bill is reprinted in full 
in Macdonald's Select Statutes of United States History, 1861- 
1898, pp. 124-128. 



286 CHAELES SUMNER 

merit of Arkansas. Sumner spoke briefly but with 
great earnestness in opposition to the measure. 
This speech showed the extent to which already 
" the two most influential men in public life were at 
variance." ' Sumuer objected to the irregularity of 
the proceedings by which the governmeut had been 
organized under military orders within a territory 
hardly subjugated, but laid most stress upon the 
contention that the states which had been in revolt 
could be readmitted to statehood only by act of 
Congress. A resolution of his own was at this time 
pending— adopted in substance two years later- 
providing : " That a state pretending to secede from 
the Union and battling against the national govern, 
ment to maintain this pretense, must be regarded 
as a rebel state, subject to military occupation, and 
without title to be represented on this floor until it 
has been readmitted by a vote of both Houses of 
Congress ; and the Senate will decline to entertain 
any application from any such rebel state until after 
such vote of both Houses of Congress." 2 Both reso- 
lutions were referred to the Committee on the Judi- 
ciary, of which Trumbull was chairman, and were 
reported unfavorably, as were also the credentials 
of the persons claiming admission as senators from 
Arkansas. 

1 Rhodes, Vol. V, p. 55. 

- May 27th. McPherson, History of the Rebellion, p. 320. 
Works, Vol. VIII, p. 470. See similar resolutions of February 
23, 1865 and March 8, 1865. Works, Vol. IX, pp. 311 and 
340. In the House, Garfield and Dawes proposed resolutions 
of like character, June 13 and 22. 1864. 



SUMNER AND LINCOLN 287 

In February, 1865, however, substantially the 
same question arose over the resolution reported 
from the Committee on the Judiciary, of which 
Trumbull was still chairman, recognizing the gov- 
ernment of Louisiana. Personal conference with 
the President had apparently brought about this 
change of Trumbull's views. Lincoln was so 
strongly committed to his scheme of reconstruction 
that the senators were reluctant to speak openly in 
opposition. Sumner had again and again urged 
him to "have no break with Congress on such 
questions." l As to his own ground he had no 
hesitation : from this time forward, leaving for 
the most part to others the protest against the 
irregularity in the initiation of the government by 
military orders and the inadequacy of the voting 
population on which such government was based, 
Sumner now, alone, began his fight to prevent the 
admission of auy state which did not guarantee 
freedom and equality at the polls as well as before 
the courts to colored people on precisely the same 
terms as to whites. To this struggle for absolute 
equality of civil rights the greater part of his 
strength for the rest of his life was to be devoted. 
To it he brought all the intensity of conviction, all 
the determination and fearlessness in debate which 
he had formerly devoted to securing the repeal of 
the Fugitive Slave Act and the proclaiming of 
emancipation. His attitude was affirmed both by 
word and deed : "I think it [the measure] dauger- 

1 Letter to Bright, Jan. 1, 1865. Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 221. 



288 CHARLES SUMNER 

ous ; and thinking it dangerous, I am justified in 
opposing it, and justified, too, in employing all the 
instruments that I find in the arsenal of parliamen- 
tary warfare." l Riders, dilatory motions, objec- 
tions, talking against time,— all of these Sumner 
used without hesitation. In these early days of 
this ten years' struggle, when senators interrupted 
him with cries, "Don't waste time!" "Give 
up!" his reply was, "That is not my habit." 
"We know that!" came the response, with 
laughter. The debate was full of sharp person- 
alities. Sumner found one of his principal allies 
in a senator from Kentucky, but Wade proved his 
most zealous supporter. Sumner now asserted, as 
many times later, that the Union needed the ballots 
as well as the muskets of colored men. 2 

The resolution had been brought in only about a 
week before the end of the session, and the ap- 
propriation and revenue bills were still to be con- 
sidered. The result was that by persistent filibus- 
tering Sumner and a dozen other senators prevented 
a vote upon the recognition of Louisiana. For the 
absolute equality of the colored race as a condition 
of readmission, Sumner had made his fight alone, 
and his influence more than that of any other 
blocked the recognition of the state, which was the 
vital point for reconstruction in accordance with 
the Lincoln plan. Even before the debate in the 

1 February 25, 1865. 

• See Sumner's resolution of Feb. 25, 1865. McPherson, p. 
580. 



SUMNEK AND LINCOLN 289 

Senate began, Lincoln is said to have declared : 
"I can do nothing with Mr. Sumner in these mat- 
ters. While Mr. Sumner is very cordial with me, 
he is making his history in an issue with me on 
this very point." l In his great disappointment 
at the outcome of the contest, Lincoln took no pains 
to conceal the fact that he considered Sumner 
chiefly responsible for the defeat of his favorite 
measure. In cabinet meeting on the very last day 
of his life, Lincoln declared: u These humanita- 
rians break down all state rights and constitutional 
rights. Had the Louisianians inserted the negro 
in their Constitution, and had that instrument been 
in all other respects the same, Mr. Sumner would 
never have excepted to that Constitution." 2 

The relations between Lincoln and Sumner dur- 
ing the last weeks of the President's life afford an 
interesting study. Sumner had just blocked a 
project on which Lincoln's heart was set. Yet, far 
from cherishing resentment, Lincoln showed him 
more signs of personal regard than to any other man 
in public service. It is hard to see much basis for 
congeniality in two men so utterly unlike. " Sum- 
ner," Lincoln once said, " is my idea of a bishop." 
Certainly the Massachusetts senator had been un- 
remitting in his efforts to point out to the President 
the precise line of his duty. It is far easier to un- 
derstand how Mrs. Lincoln should have come to 

l Nicolay and Hay, Lincoln, Vol. X, p. 85. 
*lbid., 'pp. 282-285. Welles, The Galaxy, April, 1872, 
p. 526. 



290 CHARLES SUMNER 

have a great admiration for Suinner. His elo- 
quence and humanitarian zeal always made a strong- 
appeal to high-minded women. Though of South- 
ern origin, the wife of the President had come to 
sympathize with a radical anti-slavery policy. In 
her zeal and inexperience she even took such sur- 
prising steps as the sending of notes to Sumner, 
repeatedly urging him to oppose the appointment 
to the cabinet of a man of whom she did not ap- 
prove. 1 Sumner's foreign travel and acquaintance 
impressed Mrs. Lincoln, who was interested in 
French, and enjoyed discussing French books with 
him. On the eve of the inauguration ball came an 
autograph note from the President inviting Sumner 
to accompany him to that function, and the Presi- 
dent's carriage called for him. As the party en- 
tered the ballroom, Sumner escorting Mrs. Lincoln, 
there were many who inferred that Lincoln had ac- 
cepted Sumner's reconstruction policies. 

According to his custom, Sumner remained in 
Washington for some time after the end of the ses- 
sion, to finish up business and, also, to bring to 
bear what influence he could in favor of his plan of 
reconstruction. During these weeks apparently 
Lincoln and Sumner were each seeking the other in 
the hope of making a convert. On one occasion 
Sumner had a midnight conference with the Presi- 
dent in regard to a case calling for executive 
clemency, and came to the President's office early 
the next morning by appointment to receive the 
'Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 221, n. 2, and pp. 230-231. 



SUMNER AND LINCOLN 291 

documents. While Sumner was taking some notes, 
the President broke out into praise of " Petroleum 
V. Nasby," and declared that he must "initiate" 
Sumner, adding : " For the genius to write these 
things I would gladly give up my office." There- 
upon he proceeded for nearly half an hour to regale 
the cultured Massachusetts senator with that "pa- 
triotic literature" until Sumner, "thinking there 
must be many at the door, waiting to see the Presi- 
dent on grave matters, took advantage of a pause, 
and, thanking him for the lesson of the morning, 
left," passing through the anteroom, which he found 
thronged with twenty or thirty persons, including 
senators and representatives. 1 

A few days later the President left Washington 
for the headquarters of the Army of Virginia. 
Sumner was to have accompanied Mr. and Mrs. 
Lincoln to the opera on April 5th, as he had done 
on the last occasion when the President had at- 
tended the theatre ; but plans were now changed, 
and on that day in a party of eight he accompanied 
Mrs. Lincoln to City Point, where they joined the 
President. Thence the party went to Richmond, 
where with an escort of cavalry they made visits to 
the chief points of interest. Sumner gratified his 
collector's passion by securing for Stanton the gavel 
which had been used in the Confederate Congress. 
The next day the President and his party went to 

1 Works, Vol. IX, p. 360. Sumner wrote an account of this 
episode as an introduction to a new edition of Nasby's letters, is- 
sued in 1872. 



292 CHAELES SUMNER 

Petersburg, and on the following day visited the 
sick and wounded in the tent hospitals at City 
Point. Here Lincoln shook hands with five thou- 
sand sick and wounded soldiers, and yet declared to 
Sumner that his arm was not tired. 1 They returned 
to Washington on the River Queen, as Sumner wrote 
to the Duchess of Argyll, "breakfasting, lunching 
and dining in one small family party." In these 
four days of intimate association, Sumner came to 
appreciate some points in Lincoln's character which 
he had perhaps little suspected. To the few friends 
upon the boat the President quoted Longfellow's 
* ' Resignation ' ' and on Sunday read from his favorite 
play, "Macbeth." 2 

The party reached Washington on the evening of 
the 9th. The next day Sumner received from the 
W r hite House, with a bunch of flowers, a special 
message announcing Lee's surrender. On the fol- 
lowing day came an invitation to him to bring a 
friend to the White House to see the illumination in 
celebration of the surrender, but for some reason 

1 Works, Vol. IX, p. 410. 

5 With the strange premonitory mysticism which Lincoln 
often showed, the passage over which he lingered and which he 
read a second time to this group of his friends was the words of 
Macbeth : 

" Duncan is in his grave ; 
After life's fitful fever he sleeps well ; 
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, 
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, 
Can touch him further." 

—Act III, Re. II, 11. 23-27. 

Works, Vol. IX, pp. 408, 416. Marquis de Chambrun's 
"Recollections of Sumner," Scribner'a Magazine, January, 
1893, pp. 33, 35. 



SUMNER AND LINCOLN 293 

this was not accepted. In response to calls from 
the crowd, the President that evening made his last 
public speech. To the surprise of the listeners, he 
took this occasion to defend, in a long, earnest argu- 
ment, his course in regard to Louisiana. On reading 
the address the next day, Sumner confided toLieber 
his forebodings: " The President's speech and 
other things augur confusion and uncertainty in 
the future, with hot controversy. Alas ! alas ! ' ' 
Thursday evening Sumner was again invited to the 
White House to see the illumination in conrpany 
with General Grant. It is not known whether these 
two, who in later years were to be brought into such 
bitter opposition, met here for the first time. The 
next day, the fatal 14th of April, in cabinet meet- 
ing Lincoln reasserted his view as to reconstruction, 
mentioned Sumner's opposing opinion, and in- 
timated that it was providential that the end of the 
rebellion came when the question of reconstruction 
could be considered, as far as the Executive was 
concerned, without interference from Congress. 1 

That evening Lincoln was assassinated. The 
news of the crime spread rapidly. It came to Sum- 
ner as he was talking with friends. He went to the 
White House immediately, supposing that the 
President had been taken thither, and thence to the 
house where the stricken man lay. There in the 
gray hours of dawn he sat, holding the hand that 
had freed the slave, and sobbing like a child. As 
Lincoln breathed his last, his son stood leaning 

1 Welles, in The Galaxy, April, 1872, pp. 525-527. 



294 CHARLES SUMNER 

upon Sumner's arm. The senator then entered a 
carriage with General Halleck, who stopped at the 
hotel where Johnson was lodging to inform him 
that he must not go out without a guard. From here 
they drove to Seward's house, where a single assas- 
sin had wounded six persons. On reaching his own 
lodgings, Summer found that Stanton had already 
posted a squad of soldiers there, as Sumner's life, 
also, was reported to be in danger. 

In the joint gathering of senators and representa- 
tives then in Washington, Sumner was made chair- 
man of the committee which prepared the resolu- 
tions and made other preparations for the represen- 
tation of Congress in the funeral ceremonies. On 
the 1st of June, the commemoration day appointed by 
President Johnson, by invitation of the Boston city 
government, Sumner pronounced the eulogy upon 
Lincoln in Faneuil Hall. He told the story of the 
dead statesman's rise to power and bore witness to 
his great qualities of mind and heart, criticizing 
only what had seemed to the speaker a slowness in 
hiking a stand upon some questions. He especially 
emphasized his simplicity and strength of character, 
and the qualities of his style, " argumentative, 
logical and spirited with quaint humor and sinewy 
sententiousness." From Mrs. Lincoln Sumner re- 
ceived a most appreciative message, and Robert T. 
Lincoln wrote to him that of all the many eulogies 
that had been delivered, he had seen none which so 
well as Sumner's expressed " what all who knew my 
father feel, but cannot say." 



CHAPTER XV 

JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 

At the beginning of the first war session of Con- 
gress Sumner hud gone out of his way to express 
great respect for Andrew Johnson, the loyal senator 
from Tennessee, and despite the disgraceful features 
which had attended Johnson's inauguration as Vice- 
President, Sumner's early impressions of him in the 
office now thrust upon him were distinctly favorable. 
He had occasion to call upon him on business a few 
hours before his taking the oath of office ; and he forth- 
with began to exert all possible pressure to induce 
Johnson to endorse his reconstruction policy. A 
week from the day of Lincoln's assassination, Chief 
Justice Chase and Sumner together called upon the 
new Executive to urge him to favor negro suffrage. 
Of this interview Sumner wrote to Lieber : "I was 
charmed by his sympathy, which was entirely dif- 
ferent from his predecessor's. . . . Our late 
President accepted the principle, but hesitated in 
the application. . . . Our new President ac- 
cepts the principle and the application. . . . 
Both of us left him light-hearted." ! Meantime the 
question had risen in a conference between Stanton 
and some leading members of the two Houses, at 
»May 2, 1865. Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 243. 



296 CHARLES SUMNER 

which Sumner had insisted that the negro's right to 
vote was " the essence, — the great essential ; . . . 
unless the black man has the right to vote, his free- 
dom is mockery. " It soon arose also at a cabinet 
meeting, where, in the absence of Seward, the nieni- 
bers were evenly divided upon the issue ; the Presi- 
dent did not commit himself. When Sumner went 
to Boston to pronounce the eulogy upon Lincoln, he 
felt confident that Johnson's influence would be 
thrown in favor of full suffrage rights for the blacks, 
and that none of the seceded states would be precip- 
itated back into the Union without passing through 
a term of probation. But ten days had not passed 
before the President issued a proclamation of 
amnesty, followed by another, providing for the re- 
construction of North Carolina and excluding ne- 
groes from the suffrage in that state. 1 Forthwith 
other proclamations affirmed the steps already taken 
by Lincoln as to Louisiana, Arkansas and Tennessee, 
and provided for the reconstruction of the rest of 
the seceded states. 

It is not necessary here to canvass the influences 
which led to this a political somersault." It was a 
bitter disappointment to Sumner and other radicals. 
Thaddeus Stevens had already taken alarm at 
Johnson's proclamation of May 9th, recognizing the 
Pierpont government of Virginia ; he now wrote to 
Sumner : " Is there no way to arrest the insane 

1 This proclamation of May 29th was issued two days before 
Sumner's eulogy on Lincoln, and doubtless this fact accounts 
for some of his digressions. 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 297 

course of the President in reorganization ! ' ' and as- 
serted that he had sent him two letters, urging him 
to ' l stay his hand till Congress meets. ' ' Wade went 
to Washington to beg Johnson to convene Congress, 
but soon reported to Sumner that he had been un- 
able to divert the President from the policy on which 
he was resolved. 1 

During the summer months these acts of Johnson 
apparently awakened little disapproval, still less 
apprehension, among the people of the North. 
They seemed a consistent carrying forward of am- 
nesty and reconstruction, as begun by Lincoln. But 
the radical leaders, who had viewed with alarm the 
first steps taken by Lincoln, were now aghast at the 
pace Johnson was attaining. "If something is not 
done, the President will be crowned King before 
Congress meets, ' ' Wade wrote to Sumner, and later : 
"The danger is that so much success will reconcile 
the people to almost anything." He could foresee 
no other result of the President's course than the 
consigning of " the great Union or Republican party, 
bound hand and foot, to the tender mercies of the 
rebels we have so lately conquered in the field and 
their Copperhead allies of the North." 2 

Sumner was not so disheartened, though he con- 
fessed to Bright his disappointment that the radicals 
in the cabinet had deserted " the good cause." 3 He 

'Sumner's Works, Vol. IX, p. 480. 

2 Letter to Sumner, July 29th. Sumner Coir. MS., Harvard 
Library. 

3 Pierce, Vol. IV, pp. 250, 255. 



298 CHARLES SUMKER 

straightway set about organizing public opinion. 
Through personal correspondence, letters to the 
press, magazine articles and interviews with public 
men, he sought to further the measures to which he 
Miis ardently devoted. Seward, Welles and McCul- 
loeh approved Johnson's policies. In the cabinet 
no man was prepared to force equal suffrage for the 
negro as an out-and-out issue with the President ; 
and of the senators B. Gratz Brown was the only 
one who during the summer declared himself ready 
without reserve to follow Sumner's lead upon that 
point. Of the members of the House, three (Bout- 
well, Julian and Garfield) put themselves on record 
before the public as in favor of negro suffrage, 
but Dawes, soon to follow Sumner in the Senate, now 
defended Johnson's course, vigorously challenging 
the constitutionality of any equal-suffrage require- 
ment which Congress might attempt to force as a 
condition of reconstruction. Hardly auy other pub- 
lic man or editor of prominence looked with favor 
upon Sumner's programme, even Greeley, who ad- 
vocated negro suffrage as just and politic, being un- 
willing to affront the President by rigidly insisting 
upon it. But clearer than ever stood the fact that, 
in the face of every opposition, Sumner was inexor- 
ably insistent that before a seceded state should be 
restored to normal relations in the Uuion, it must 
grant full and equal suffrage rights to the negro. 
To Lieber Sumner acknowledged that all his first im- 
pressions were in favor of the reading and writing 
test, but that he had come to regard this as imprac- 



JOHNSOX AND RECONSTRUCTION 299 

ticable, since any such test would have to apply to 
whites aud blacks alike, aud it would be impossible 
to get votes of Congress to disfranchise men who 
were already voters, as such a test would inevitably 
do. " Besides," he added, u there are very intelli- 
gent persons, especially among the freednien, who 
cannot read or write. But we need the votes of all, 
and cannot afford to wait." 1 

At the Massachusetts state Republican conven- 
tion, on September 14th, Sumner took the chair. 
He spoke with intense earnestness, urging "the 
right of the colored race to equality in suffrage as 
in all other things, both for its own protection and 
for the safety of the country, — to be maintained by 
Congress as a condition in the restoration of the 
rebel states, and irrevocably secured by an amend- 
ment of the Constitution forbidding any exclusion 
on account of race or color," — one of the earliest 
suggestions of what was to become the Fifteenth 
Amendment. The Massachusetts Republicans en- 
dorsed Sumner's programme, but this stand was 
taken by the party in only three other states 
(Vermont, Iowa and Minnesota), although before 
Congress assembled there was evidence of growth 
of popular sentiment in its favor. Some of the 
constitutions adopted and the laws passed in 1865 
in the seceded states under warrant of Johnson's 
proclamations, especially Mississippi's refusal to 
ratify the Thirteenth Amendment and her harsh 
legislation with reference to the freedmen, afforded 
better of August 14, 1865. Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 256. 



300 CHAKLES SUMNER 

ample justification to a man of Sunnier' s mode of 
thought for the conviction that their reconstruction 
was premature and in the wrong hands ; fur while, 
before Congress met, four of the states had annulled 
the ordinances of secession and ratified the emanci- 
pating Amendment, they not only confined the 
suffrage to white citizens but passed a variety of act.s 
discriminating against the freedmen with the 
tendency and effect of reducing them to virtual 
peonage. The President himself was so impressed 
by the growing belief that mere emancipation 
would leave the freedmen defenseless, that in his 
circular to the provisional governors he suggested 
that the ballot be given to all freedmen "who can 
lead the Constitution of the United States, and 
write their names, and also to those who own real 
estate valued at not less than two hundred and fifty 
dollars and pay taxes thereon." But that the sug- 
gestion came from the politician rather than from 
the statesman or philanthropist is clear from his 
message to the Mississippi governor : "I hope and 
trust that your convention will do this, and as a 
consequence the radicals, who are wild upon negro 
franchise, will be completely foiled in their attempt 
to keep the Southern states from renewing their re- 
lations to the Union by not accepting their senators 
and representatives." ! 

On the Saturday evening before the session 
opened, Sumner had a long interview with John- 

1 Letter to W. L. Sharkey, Aug. 15, 1866. Blame, Vol. II, 
p. 81. 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 301 

son, and found him " harsh, petulant and unrea- 
sonable." * There was so little basis for common 
understanding that Sumner left him convinced 
"that the President's whole soul was set as a flint 
against the good cause, and that by the assassination 
of Abraham Lincoln the rebellion had vaulted into 
the presidential chair." As he later wrote to 
Bright, " He is indocile, obstinate, perverse, im- 
penetrable, and hates the education and civilization 
of New England." They parted never again to 
meet on friendly terms. On the very first day of 
the session, as soon as he could get the floor, Sum- 
ner introduced a series of ten resolutions, covering 
the whole field of reconstruction. His object was 
to forestall the President, whose message had not 
yet been presented, and to form public opinion. 
The condition which he laid down as of fundamental 
importance was the maintenance by Congress of 
absolute political and civic equality of all citizens, 
white or black. He based this upon the constitu- 
tional duty to guarantee to every state a republican 
form of government. It was no longer possible to 
fail to see the vast proportions of the problems in- 
volved. 

In the House Stevens was not less alert. Under 
his prompting, on the first day of the session, the 
clerk admitted to the roll of members-elect none of 
the men who had been chosen from the states which 
had seceded, and refused to listen to their protests 
or to entertain motions directing that the names of 

1 Works, Vol. XI, pp. 24, 25. 



302 CHARLES SUMNER 

the two Tennessee members- elect be added. The 
work of organization was rushed through, and un- 
der suspension of the rules Stevens then introduced 
a resolution providing for the appointment of a 
joint committee of nine from the House and six 
from the Senate to investigate the condition of the 
states which had been in rebellion "and to report 
whether they or any of them are entitled to be 
represented in either House." ' Protest was made 
as to the impropriety of acting upon such a motion 
without awaiting the President's message, but it 
was nevertheless passed by a vote of nearly four to 
one and the committee was constituted with Stevens 
as chairman of the House committee and Fessenden 
of the Senate committee, and also of the joint com- 
mittee. 

Johnson's first message was an unexpectedly 
statesmanlike paper, now known to have been 
written by George Bancroft. 2 It stated the steps 

x The surprising fact that Sumner and Stevens, who at first 
had but a small following, were soon dictating the congressional 
programme of reconstruction is well discussed by W. A. Dun- 
ning in Essays on the Ciril War and Reconstruction, and in Be- 
construction, Political and Economic, p. 52 : "It was to the 
esprit de corps of the legislature, as against the overgrown pre- 
tensions of the executive, that the most effective appeals were 
made by the radical leaders, Stevens and Sumner. These men 
could not have carried with them a majority of either House — 
probably not a majority of the non-Democratic members in 
either — for a proposition to discard the President's plan; but 
for a proposition to hold it in abeyance till Congress could 
formulate an independent judgment on the question involved 
it was easy to win a decisive majority." 

2 Paper by W. A. Dunning, Mass. Hist. Soc. Proo., Nov., 
1905. 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 303 

which the President had taken in his effort u to re- 
store the rightful energy of the general government 
and of the states" and intimated that after the 
states lately in revolt had adopted the Thirteenth 
Amendment it would u remain for the states whose 
powers have been so long in abeyance to resume 
their places in the two branches of the national 
legislature, and thereby complete the work of 
restoration. " He dwelt upon the fact that the 
Constitution did not assume to prescribe suffrage 
conditions within the states, and declared that a 
concession of the elective franchise to the freedmen 
by the act of the President would be an entirely un- 
warranted departure from precedent and from the 
spirit of the Constitution. 1 

In both bodies the debates soon brought clearly 
into view a wide-spread opposition to the President. 
On motion of Sumner there were sent to the Senate 
the reports of Carl Schurz and of General Grant on 
conditions in the Southern states. Schurz' s report 
was the result of a three months' inspection, made 
under the special commission of Johnson. It de- 
clared that in general he found in the South " an 
entire absence of that national spirit which forms 
the basis of true loyalty and patriotism," and he 
therefore urged that negro suffrage be required as a 
condition of reconstruction in those states. Such 
statements and recommendations were utterly dis- 
tasteful to Johnson in his present mood, and accord- 

1 Dec. 4, 1865. Messages and Papers of the Presidents, Vol. VI, 
pp. 353-371. 



304 CHARLES SUMNER 

ingly his message of transmittal made only formal 
reference to this report, but laid emphasis upon that 
of General Grant, who had spent only four or five 
days in the South on an inspection tour, the object 
of which was primarily military, and who reported 
that " the mass of thinking men of the South accept 
the present situation of affairs in good faith." 
Sumner denounced the message as " like the white- 
washing message of Franklin Pierce with reference 
to the enormities in Kansas", he characterized 
Grant's report as "hasty," while that of Schurz 
was "accurate, authentic, and most authoritative." 
With abundance of detail from reliable sources, he 
then set forth acts and laws of each of the seceded 
states which showed, so he asserted, a lack of loyalty 
or a determination to discriminate against the freed- 
men. 1 He called for information in regard to the 
President's appointments in the South, and the 
acts of Southern conventions, and later repeatedly 
brought to the attention of the Senate appointments 
of men whom the oath of loyalty should have de- 
barred. 

Both in Congress and among the people there 
was great reluctance to come to an open breach with 
the President. After four years of strife, business 
interests wanted a speedy return to normal condi- 
tions. The Republican party held power by a very 
narrow margin, and it was feared thai factional dis- 
cord might put the government into the hands of 

'For a more judicious verdict upon the spirit of these laws see 
Rhodes, Vol. V, pp. 550-557, aud citations in notes. 



JOHXSOS AXD REGONST&UOTION 305 

the Democrats, and endanger hard-won fruits of the 
war. But when Johnson on February 19th vetoed 
the bill to enlarge the powers of the Freed in en's 
Bureau, and denounced Sumner and other Repub- 
lican leaders as on a par with Davis, Slidell and 
Toombs — a performance which by practically unani- 
mous vote the Massachusetts legislature declared to 
be u without the shadow of justification or defense " 
— patience ceased to be a virtue. His next two 
vetoes were promptly overridden by Congress. ' 

During this session much time was taken up by 
debates over the Fourteenth Amendment. The 
most disputed feature was the clause relating to 
representation. As it came up from the House it 
provided that " whenever the elective franchise 
shall be denied or abridged in any state on account 
of race or color, the persons therein of such race or 
color shall be excluded from the basis of representa- 
tion." It was estimated that if all the colored peo- 
ple in the Southern states were excluded, it would 
reduce their representation from eighty-three to 
thirty-five, and many men placed great reliance 
upon this as the inducement which would lead the 
South to extend the suffrage to negroes. Sumner, 
however, denounced it as " another compromise 
with human rights" and as a recognition of the 
right of states to make suffrage discriminations 
"ou account of race and color. " In a speech of four 
hours he traversed thoroughly not only the question 

1 The Civil Rights Bill and the second Freedmen's Bureau 
Bill. 



306 CHAKLES SUMNER 

before the Senate, but the whole ground of his reso- 
lutions on reconstruction. ' He argued that for de- 
termining the status of the Xegro, Congress had 
full competence derived from the war power, from 
the clause of the Thirteenth Amendment authori- 
zing Congress to enforce emancipation by appropriate 
legislation, and from the constitutional duty as well 
as power to " guarantee to every state a republican 
form of government," Upon this last point he laid 
great stress. His earnestness and moral elevation 
made a deep impression. His arraignment of the 
caste spirit involved in the suffrage restrictions 
which the proposed amendment would tolerate put 
its advocates on the defensive. But among men of 
legal training and judicial mind he won few con- 
verts to his dictum, " Whatever is required for the 
national defense is constitutional/ * For the import 
of u a republican form of government " he studied 
not the opinions of the framers of the Constitution 
but his own inner consciousness and political ideals. 
The debate continued with a good deal of bitterness 
for five or six weeks, during which a test vote on an 
amendment forbidding any discrimination as to race 
or color received but ten votes in its favor. By the 
leaders of the Committee on Reconstruction Sumner 
was held in large part responsible for the failure of 
the amendment in the Senate. 2 Fessendeu attacked 

'February 5, 1866. Works, Vol. X, pp. 119-237. This 
speech fills forty-one columns of the Congressional (Uobe! 

' " When the measure [the proposed Fourteenth Amendment] 
came before the Senate, Mr. Sumner opposed its passage and 
alleged that we proposed to barter the right of the negroes to 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 307 

him with bitter personalities, while Stevens found 
relief for his resentment in declaring that the 
amendment had been "slaughtered by a puerile 
and pedantic criticism, by a perversion of philo- 
logical definition" and by the " united forces of 
self-righteous Eepublicans and unrighteous Copper- 
heads." * March 12th Sumner himself presented a 
form of constitutional amendment, the representa- 
tive feature of which closely resembled that which 
was soon to be introduced by the Committee on Re- 
construction, and which late in the session, with 
Sumner's approval, passed the Senate, and also the 

vote for diminished representation on the part of the old slave 
states in the House and in the electoral college ; while in truth 
the loss of representation was imposed as a penalty upon any 
state that should deprive any class of its adult male citizens of 
the right to vote. Upon this allegation of Mr. Sumner the 
resolution was defeated in the Senate." This hrought upon 
him severe criticisms. " These criticisms affected Mr. Sumner 
deeply and he then devoted himself to the preparation of an 
amendment which he could approve. While he was engaged in 
that work I called upon him and he read seventeeu drafts of a 
proposition not one of which was entirely satisfactory to him- 
self, and not one of which would have heen accepted by Con- 
gress or the country. The difficulty was in the situation. 
Upon the return of the seceded states, their representation 
would be increased nearly forty votes in the House and in the 
electoral college, while the voting force would remain in the 
white population. The injustice of such a condition was ap- 
parent, and there were only two possible remedies. One was 
to extend the franchise to the blacks. The country — the loyal 
states — were not then read}' for the measure. The alternative 
was to cut off the representation from states that denied the 
elective franchise to any class of adult male citizens. Finally 
Mr. Sumner was compelled to accept the alternative. Some 
change of phraseology was made, and Mr. Sumner gave a re- 
luctant vote for the resolution." — G. S. Boutwell, Sixty Years 
of Public Life, Vol. II, p. 42. 
1 Congressional Globe, p. 2459. 



308 CHARLES SUMNEB 

House, and presently was ratified by the states. 
Yet the power to discriminate in the suffrage on 
account of race or color, so long and fiercely de- 
bated and still left possible in the final form of the 
Fourteenth Amendment, was soon to be taken away 
by the Fifteenth Amendment. ' 

At this session Sumner accepted an appointment 
to the Committee on the District of Columbia, with 
the avowed purpose of so changing its personnel as 
to secure a report favorable to equal suffrage within 
the District, For this he argued with great ear- 
nestness as a matter of principle and of precedent, 
but it did not become a law at this session. 

Sumner did his utmost to impose the condition of 
equal suffrage without race or color discrimination 
in the acts for the admission of Colorado and Ne- 
braska — both of which measures were vetoed 2 — and 

1 The motives aud aims of those who drafted and ratified this 
Amendment are presented comprehensively in The Adoption of 
the Fourteenth Amendment, by Horace E. Flack. Mr. Rhodes 
(Vol. V, pp. 602-610) advances cogent reasons for his belief 
that the Southern states ought promptly to have accepted what 
now became the congressional plan of reconstruction, — the 
Johnson conditions supplemented by the adoption of this 
Amendment. They would thus have saved themselves from far 
more galling exactions. 

2 It was by a "pocket veto'' that this Nebraska bill was 
killed. It was said that there wen- at the time not more than 
fifty negroes iu Nebraska, and Wade protested against the ex- 
clusion of the would-be state because of '• a mere technicality." 
Sumner rejoined : "In other days we all joined in saying 'No 
more slave states!' I now insist upon another cry, No more 
states with the word white in their Constitutions!'" Con- 
gressional Globe, 2d Session. 39th Cong., p. 121. It was after 
isumner's success in this matter that Gerrit Smith wrote to 
him : "I thank you aud 1 thank God that neither Nebraska 



JOHXSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 309 

for the reconstruction of Tennessee, his support 
from other senators varying from three to seven. 
Yet only two years later he was to be upheld by the 
entire Republican vote in his contention as to the 
necessity and effect of this condition, and it was 
then to be applied to live of the reconstructed states. 
At this time an effort was made by the leaders of 
the woman's suffrage movement to secure Sumner's 
potent advocacy for their cause, but he declined to 
be drawn into that controversy while other and 
more important issues were demanding solution. 

At this time strong pressure was exerted to secure 
the modification of the law as to jurors so as to 
make easy the trial and conviction of Jefferson 
Davis. It was Sumner's hope that Davis would not 
be brought to trial ; in any event he insisted that 
such a case " should be approached carefully, most 
discreetly, and with absolute reference to the exist- 
ing law of the land." 

Another subject upon which popular feeling was 
much wrought up was retaliation against England 
for her breaches of neutrality during the war. The 
British government still refused to acknowledge any 
wrongs on its part in connection with the Confeder- 
ate cruisers, built in British ports, which had 
wrought havoc upon American shipping. Accord- 
ingly the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in- 



nor Colorado is yet a state, and I trust that neither will be a 
state so long as they continue to insult Heaven and earth with 
their infamous Caste Constitutions," Sumner Corr., Harvard 
Library. Dec. 26, 1866, 



310 CHARLES SUMNER 

troduced a bill for modifying the neutrality acts so 
as to permit American citizens to sell skips to either 
belligerent in a war when the United States should 
be a neutral, and repealing the prohibition upon 
Americans' fitting out expeditions against a coun- 
try with which the United States was at peace. 
This bill passed the House by a unanimous vote. 
Probably no man in public life rated as more 
grievous the injury which England's negligence had 
inflicted upon the United States than did Sumner, 
yet he insisted that "our own country should be 
kept firm and constant in the attitude of justice." 
This House measure reached the Senate Friday 
afternoon. It had already been voted that the ses- 
sion should end at four o'clock on the following 
day. The bill was referred to the Committee on 
Foreign Relations, and Sumner determined that it 
should not be acted upon. The hotheads were bound 
to call it up, but Sumner came to the evening ses- 
sion armed with a formidable array of books and 
announced to those near him that he was " good for 
live hours at least." From seven in the evening till 
seven in the morning he kept his vigil. Toward 
noon of the final day the motion was made to take 
up the bill, but Sumner instantly took the floor, an- 
nouncing that he would speak all the remainder of 
the session, if necessaiy, to bring about its defeat. 
The advocates of the measure therefore gave up the 
fight. The responsibility was a grave one, but he 
was ready thus single-handed to oppose what he 
deemed an injustice, even though it were embodied 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 311 

in a bill which was heartily approved by the peo- 
ple, which had passed the House by a unanimous 
vote, and which was sure to pass the Senate if for a 
single moment he should relax his resistance. 1 

During this session was passed a most useful 
measure which Sumner had been the first to pro- 
pose in his earliest days in the Senate, fifteen years 
before,— a bill for the revision and codification of 
the statutes of the United States. His other legis- 
lative interests were very varied. He found time 
to advocate international copyright, the raising of 
the rank of our representatives at foreign courts, 
the adoption of the metric system, etc. His ex- 
cessive labors brought serious reminders of the 
illness which had followed the Brooks assault, 
and he was obliged to submit to medical treatment 
and make a trip to the White Mountains for his 
health. 

It was in June of this year that Sumner's mother 
died. She had been gradually failing, and the sum- 
mons which called him from the Senate to her side 
was not unexpected. She had been proud of her 
famous son, and he felt a genuine affection for her. 
All the members of his family, with the exception 
of one married sister, were now dead. A few 
months later Sumner made an ill-advised marriage 
which led only to disappointment and divorce. 
Bereavement, the break-up of his Boston home and 

1 A writer in the Pall Mall Gazette declared : "No other man 
could have arrested by his single voice a measure unanimously 
passed by the House." December 26, 1866. Pierce, Vol. IV, 
p. 292. 



312 CHAELES SUMNER 

the wreck of his own long-deferred hopes of domestic 
joys, all coining upon Sumner in a single year, aged 
him greatly. His health was impaired, and the 
severe contests of the coming years found him more 
stern and less tolerant of oj)position than in the 
early part of his career. 

The recess did not narrow the breach between tLe 
President and Congress. During the summer John- 
son had "swung round the circle" on a political 
tour, and in his speeches had repeatedly referred to 
Congress in most contemptuous terms as " hanging 
upon the verge of the government, as it were ; a 
body called, or which assumes to be, the Congress of 
the United States, while, in fact, it is a Congress of 
only a part of the United States. ' ' Shortly after the 
completion of this unprecedented tour, Sumner de- 
livered in Boston an address on "The One Man 
Power vs. Congress." It was a scathing indict- 
ment of the President, charging him with having 
done more mischief, in the same space of time, than 
any other ruler in all history. He frankly at- 
tributed Johnson's change of attitude toward recon- 
st motion to defects in his character and to the in- 
fluence of unwise counselors, among whom he did 
not hesitate to specify Seward. The fall elections 
showed that the country at large was in pronounced 
opposition to the President, and on the very first day 
of tiif session a bill was introduced into the Senate 
" to regulate the tenure of offices." It was under de- 
bate for several weeks. Sumner urged its extension 
to a large number of officers whose appointment hith 



JOHNSON AND KECCXNSTKUCTION 313 

erto had not required confirmation by the Senate. 
The bill was vetoed by Johnson, but on the same 
day it was passed over his veto by both houses by 
votes of nearly three to one. Its intention was to 
strip the President of much of his power. The de- 
bates upon it aroused intense feeling. Sumner de- 
nounced Johnson as " utterly unprincipled and 
wicked," "the author of incalculable woe to his 
country," "the successor of Jefferson Davis, in the 
spirit by which he is governed and in the mischief 
he is inflicting on his country." The possibility of 
an impeachment was constantly in mind, and a 
Maryland senator declared that such language 
from Sumner ought to disqualify him from acting as 
a judge in the event of an impeachment trial. 1 

The equal suffrage issue was now to be fought 
through to the end. In the first month a bill for 
equal suffrage in the District of Columbia was car- 
ried, and passed over the President's veto. 2 Then 
the bill for the admission of Nebraska was again 



1 Dewitt, Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, pp. 189, 
191, 219, 229, 231. 

2 As early as 1864 Sumner had sought to ensure equal suffrage 
in the District of Columbia. McPherson, p. 241. By the law 
of 1878 all participation of residents of the District in electing 
their local government was brought to an end and the present 
system of government by an appointed commission was in- 
stituted. It is said that this change (which may well have 
been inevitable, in order to secure national control over the seat 
of the national government) was hastened by the melancholy 
results of the experiment of submitting the government of the 
District to an electorate consisting largely of illiterate negroes. 
Corruption was rife and the District was brought to the verge of 
bankruptcy. 






314 CHARLES SUMNER 

urged, and promptly Suinner's supporter of the 
previous session moved au amendment requiring 
equal suffrage. Objections were strongly set forth, 
— in particular, that such a condition could be im- 
posed only on states lately in rebellion, and that this 
would require in Nebraska a restriction not found in 
many states already in the Union. Sumner argued 
against any exclusion as "odious and offensive,'' 
and exerted himself to arouse popular sentiment 
outside the Senate which might affect senators' 
votes. The measure received a majority of two on 
a test vote, and secured a two-thirds vote when 
vetoed. The winning of equal suffrage in a state 
where reconstruction issues were not involved was a 
veritable triumph for Sumner. The tide had 
turned : the next day, without debate, a bill was 
passed prohibiting in the territories any suffrage 
discrimination on account of race or color, and this 
became a law without the President's signature. 

It will be remembered that Sumner never was 
satisfied with the form of the Fourteenth Amend 
ment, which impliedly allowed suffrage discrimina- 
tions on account of race or color under penalty of a 
proportionate loss of representation. He was, there- 
fore, not at all disposed to take the position of most 
of his Republican colleagues, that if the Johnson 
legislatures in the seceded states would ratify this 
amendment, the restoration of those states to normal 
relations with the Union would be complete. Sum- 
ner insisted that formal declaration should be made 
that this amendment u is in no respect an offer, 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 315 

which, if accepted by them, will bind Congress to 
receive them back. In one word, it is only an in- 
stalment, and not a finality." ' 

The unanimity with which the Southern states re- 
jected the Fourteenth Amendment, the discrimina- 
tions which they were enacting against thefreedmen 
and the race riots, particularly that of .Inly 30th in 
New Orleans, were potent influences in bringing 
Sumner's colleagues to his way of thinking, and 
4 'thorough" became the reconstruction watchword 
of Congress. 2 When the Stevens bill, 3 for the division 
of the seceded states into military districts and their 
government by military authority, came from the 
House to the Senate, it gave rise to so much dis- 
agreement that a caucus of Republican members was 
called to decide upon the party's stand, and a com- 



1 Letter to F. W. Bird, Jan. 10, 1867. The Amendment 
was then pending before the Massachusetts General Court. 
Sumner wrote: "I think it best to adopt the amendment, " 
but since it was by some considered "as an offer to the rebel 
states," he urged that report or resolution should make the 
above declaration. Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 311. 

2 Rhodes, Vol. VI, p. 30. 

3 This was a substitute for the bill from the joint Committee 
on Reconstruction in the last session, which had virtually made 
ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment the sole additional 
condition precedent to the according of representation to the 
Southern states. Stevens had "carried this bill through an 
unwilling House. . . . He had obtained his majority by 
sarcasm, taunts, dragooning and by cracking the party whip. 
There had been no such scene in Congress since Douglas carried 
hia Kansas-Nebraska bill through the Senate." Rhodes, Vol. 
VI, p. 17. It passed the House February 13th, and on that 
same day was given its first reading in the Senate, where a proj- 
ect of similar character had already been introduced by Senator 
Williams. 



316 CHAELES STJMXER 

ruittce of seven was then appointed to consider the 
matter. After a vain attempt to persuade the com- 
mittee to add equal suffrage to the conditions to be 
required in their constitutions before the seceded 
states should be admitted to representation in Con- 
gress, Sumner, although but one other member of 
the committee agreed with him, gave notice that he 
should appeal to the caucus. This he did, and the 
result was a vote of seventeen to fifteen in favor of 
imposing this condition. The vote was accepted as 
binding upon the Republicans in the Senate, and 
it therefore proved decisive of the whole suffrage 
question. This bill, which in effect abolished all 
the Johnson governments in the South, was carried 
over the President's veto. 1 

Both at this session and at the one which imme- 
diately followed it, Sumner strove most earnestly to 
impose, as further requisites of reconstruction, the 
provision of homesteads for the freedmen and of free 
schools in which there should be no discrimination 
as to race or color. But the majority accepted the 
view of Sherman and Frelinghuysen, that the addi- 
tion of further supplementary conditions would be 
discouraging and distracting as well as imx^osing an 
enormous burden upon impoverished states. By a 
tie vote on March 16th his effort to add this feature 
to the supplementary Reconstruction Act was de- 
feated. To the end of his life Sumner felt deep dis- 

1 March 2d. A detailed account of the various steps leading 
to the passage of this hill is given in Blaine, Vol. II, p. 250-262. 
Rhodes, Vol. VI, pp. 13-21. 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 317 

appointment at this failure to secure free schools and 
homesteads, — a disappointment which at the time 
was so bitter that, as he confessed to George F. 
Hoar, "he left the Senate chamber, and when he 
reached his house, grief found vent in tears." 1 
When the evil consequences of negro suffrage are 
laid to Sumner's charge, it is but fair to recall that 
in his plan equal suffrage was to be associated with 
homesteads and opportunities for free education. 

From time to time in these debates Sumner could 
not refrain from reminding his colleagues that they 
had repeatedly changed their views and come to sup- 
port the policy which they had at first scorned. This 
made their yielding by no means more pleasurable, 
and did not increase his colleagues' good- will toward 
him. The Democrats, too, taunted the Eepublicans 
with their inconsistencies, and Buckalew made one 
of the most accurate characterizations of Sumner 
when he called him " the pioneer of agitation in the 
Senate," whose measures when made were criticized 
by all his colleagues as extreme, inappropriate, and 
untimely, "but were supported by them the next 
year with a zeal and vehemence even greater than 
his." 2 Two such anticipations of his party's policy 
came at this session in Sumner's unsuccessful efforts 
to get the word " white" stricken from the natural- 
ization laws and to get a bill passed prohibiting ex- 
clusion from office or from jury service in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia because of race or color. 

1 Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 317. 

2 Congressional Globe, March 16th, p. 170. 



318 CHARLES SUMNER 

This special session of Congress, held in order to 
keep a tight rein on the President and mainly de- 
voted to angrily debated measures for the carrying 
out of reconstruction, is memorable for one act of a 
totally different character, — the purchase of Alaska. 
Seward had carried on the preliminary negotiations 
in secret, and when Sumner, in response to an urgent 
summons, came to the secretary's house late on the 
evening of March 29th, he was astounded to find 
that Eussia's consent had been obtained, and that 
at that moment the treaty was being copied to be 
sent to the Senate for ratification. On the following 
day it was presented and immediately referred to 
the Committee on Foreign Eelations. Sumner had 
promised to use his influence to secure favorable 
action. Yet he confessed to friends that the Eus- 
sian treaty tried him sorely. He had no liking for 
territorial acquisitions that did not come with the 
free consent of their inhabitants. But the question 
was so complicated by politics, by a desire to meet 
the wishes of the West and to cooperate with Sew- 
ard and with the Johnson administration when it 
was doing a creditable thing, and by the engage- 
ments into which Seward had already entered, that 
Sumner was unwilling to take the responsibility of 
opposing it. l Moreover, he was already captivated 
by the vision of " a republic coextensive with the 
continent." In the Senate and in the press there 

1 Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 325, gives these as the grounds which 
Sumner at the time told him determined his support cf the 
treaty. 



JOHNSON AND KECONSTRUCTION 319 

was much ridicule of the purchase of a "barren, 
and worthless God-forsaken region," which pro- 
duces "nothing but icebergs and polar bears." 
Punsters called it "Walrussia." The treaty was 
in committee a week and then Sumner reported it 
favorably, Fessenden being the only dissenter. In 
the executive session, April 9th, Sumner made a 
carefully prepared speech of three hours in which 
he set forth the political and economic advantages 
of the purchase so convincingly that the treaty was 
ratified by a vote of thirty-seven to two. The 
speech was later amplified, and stands to-day as a 
marvelously comprehensive presentation of the 
resources of the unknown "Russian America." i 
" Alaska," as its far-stretching peninsula was called, 
was by Sumner applied to the whole territory, and 
by Seward's decision the name became fixed. In 
this speech Sumner did not fail to enter his protest 
against the treaty's having been fully negotiated 
without any consultation of the Senate, and against 
its serving as a precedent for " a system of indis- 
criminate and costly annexation," — a most timely 
protest, for within a few months Seward submitted 
a treaty with Denmark for the annexation of St. 
Thomas, — a scheme which secured the approval of 
not a single member of the Senate Committee on 
Foreign Relations. 

The months of the recess Sumner devoted to two 
literary tasks. The first, a paper entitled "Pro- 
phetic Voices Concerning America," was a collection 
1 Works, Vol. XI, pp. 186-349. 



320 CHARLES SUMNER 

of predictions relating to the American continent 
and to the United States, principally from foreign- 
ers, and ranging from those sayings of poets and 
philosophers which may have inspired Columbus, 
to those of Sumner's own friends, Cobden and de 
Tocqueville. On the very day of his death, Sumner 
was at work upon the proof-sheets of a revised edi- 
tion of this monograph which was being brought 
out in anticipation of the centennial celebration in 
1876. His second task was the preparation of a 
lecture which he used in the fall of 1867 on a tour 
through the West as far as St. Louis and Milwaukee. 
His theme was ' ' The Nation, ' ' and the lecture served 
as a means of impressing upon the public the views 
which had underlain his Senate speeches on recon- 
struction. He traced the development of unification 
in history and dwelt upon the steps which had made 
for the nationalization of the people of the United 
States. Chief stress was laid upon the power and 
duty of the central government to guarantee and 
maintain absolute equality of political and civil 
rights against any state interference. Critics even 
among Sumner's friends did not fail to note theone- 
sidedness in his thought, which seemed to regard 
the state as nothing but an administrative conveni- 
ence, and took little heed of any dangers from cen- 
tralization. 

In the spring of 18C8 retaliation, incited by re- 
sentment agaiust Great Britain, was again under 
discussion. The House bill not only vigorously 
asserted the right of expatriation, but, under Fenian 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 321 

influence, it added two extraordinary provisions : 
In ease of the unwarranted arrest and detention of 
an American citizen by a foreign government, the 
President of the United States might suspend com- 
mercial intercourse with the offending government, 
or he might retaliate in kind by ordering the arrest 
and detention of any subject or citizen of that gov- 
ernment found within the United States. This pre- 
posterous measure passed the House by a vote of 
104 to 4, eighty-one not voting. In spite of urgent 
pressure in the Senate" to secure prompt and favor- 
able action, Sumner held up this measure for two 
months, and when it finally came from his commit- 
tee, there had been substituted for the retaliatory 
provision a requirement that the President report 
to Congress any case of the arrest or detention of 
American citizens abroad, with a view to a prompt 
securiug of their rights. In the ensuing debate 
Sumner denounced the House retaliatory measure 
in detail as "nothing less than monstrous and ut- 
terly unworthy of a generous republic hoping to give 
an example to mankind' ' ; he called attention to 
the prodigious powers which it lavished upon the 
President and the outrages upon entirely innocent 
strangers which it authorized. The opposition in 
the Senate was successful in defeating the most ob- 
noxious features of the bill, but Sumner could not 
prevent the addition of an amendment giving to the 
President the authority to "use such means, not 
amounting to acts of war, as he may think necessary 
and proper to obtain or effectuate a release' ' of any 



'622 CHAKLES SUMNER 

American citizen unjustly deprived of bis liberty 
while abroad. 

The session of 1867-8 was largely devoted to 
the impeachment proceedings against President 
Johnson. Sumner's first impressions favorable to 
the President had loug since given place to a settled 
conviction that he was the chief menace to the 
country. Impeachment had his hearty approval. 
Long before the process was actually initiated, and 
consistently throughout the trial, Sumner took the 
ground that this was a political rather than a ju- 
dicial proceeding, alleging as his justification for 
this view that whereas the Constitution vested judi- 
cial power in the courts, it gave to the Senate the 
power to try impeachments. Hence the fact that 
he was a member of the body before which the 
President might presently be placed on trial, did 
not lead him to place any curb, in the Senate or out 
of it, on his denunciations of Johnson's misdeeds ; 
and his oath, taken with other senators at the be- 
ginning of the trial, to " do impartial justice ac- 
cording to the Constitution and the laws," did not 
constrain him to attempt a judicial attitude of mind 
or to insist upon the safeguards ordinarily thrown 
about the accused. Whenever Sumner appears in 
these proceedings, it is in the act of urging a ver- 
dict in the case of a criminal whose guilt has already 
been proved. Thus, on the eve of the trial, he 
challenged the credentials of the man just elected 
to the Senate by the Maryland legislature on the 
ground that that state did not have a republican 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTEUCTION 323 

form of government, and moved that his credentials 
be referred, the effect of which would have been to 
exclude a probably friendly judge during the com- 
ing trial. But few senators supported this project. 
Sumner protested against the right of the Chief- 
Justice, under the constitutional rule, to decide or 
vote upon any question, but argued in favor of the 
right of Wade, who, as president pro tern, of the 
Senate, would succeed to the presidency in the event 
of Johnson's removal, to vote on all questions. He 
favored hastening the despatch of business by ad- 
mitting " all evidence on either side not trivial or 
obviously irrelevant." l 

As the trial was drawing to a close, the bill for 
the admission of Arkansas under her reconstructed 
government was under discussion. In reporting the 

1 Among Simmer's correspondents were many who accepted 
his view that an impeachment trial was not a judicial proceed- 
ing but a process of removal. When Johnson appointed Grant 
Secretary of War, Sumner sent to Stanton a note containing the 
single word "Stick ! " This called forth enthusiastic plaudits. 
"I shall always remember the eloquence of the word for the 
exigency, ' Stick ! ' The great War Secretary will ' stick. ' 
Now there is a word for the next exigency. Say to the Senate. 
when it comes to the trial, 'Quick!'" (Jas. M. Stone, Feb. 
24, 1868.) Edward L. Pierce wrote, March 4, 1868. " Cautious 
and conservative men . . . now wish it [the impeaching] 
done as the only way to peace. To retain their support, the 
prosecution must not be languid and procrastinating. Its suc- 
cess depends on its speed." W. S. Robinson, April 13, 1868, 
writes: "I think your votes to admit testimony are right. 
They will prevent a clamor, and they help destroy the stupid 
pretense that the Senate is to be bound by court rules." Many 
others write in similar vein, and W. L. Garrison, May 2, 1868, 
subscribes his letter: "Anxiously waiting for the ignominious 
dismissal of a perfidious and usurping President." Sumner 
Corr., Harvard Library. 



324 CHAELES SUMNER 

bill in the House at this time, Stevens had plainly 
hinted that two more judges might be needed in the 
Senate. When the question was raised in the upper 
house whether, if these Arkansas applicants were 
now admitted to the Senate, they could become 
members of the court of impeachment, Sumner's 
unhesitating reply was : "Of course they can be." 
Senators were allowed to file opinions, and eighteen 
of the thirty-five who voted for conviction did so. 
Longest and most elaborate of all was that of Sum- 
ner. He and only one other of the eighteen in their 
opinions sustained each and every count in the 
articles of impeachment, Sumner declaring that he 
would "vote, if he could, 'Guilty on all and infi- 
nitely more.' " ' 

It must be confessed that in this opinion, care- 
fully elaborated and filling more than thirty printed 
pages, Sumner is seen at his worst. Lurid and 
furious invective largely take the place of argu- 
ment. "Andrew Johnson is the impersonation of 
the tyrannical slave power. In him it lives again. 
He is the lineal descendant of John 0. Calhoun and 
Jefferson Davis." He is " the attorney of slavery, 
— the usurper of legislative power, — the violator of 
law, — the patron of rebels, — the helping hand of the 
rebellion, — the kicker from office of good citizens, — 
the open bunghole of the treasury, — the architect of 
the * Whiskey Ring,' — the stumbling-block to all 

1 Works, Vol. XII, pp. :U 8-410. Trial of Audrew Johnson. 
Published by order of the Senate, Vol. Ill, p. 247. Dewitt, 
The Impeachment and Trial of Andrew Johnson, pp. 581-586. 
See also Dewitt, pp. 568, 584, 587. 



JOHNSON AND EECONSTRUCTION 325 

good laws by wanton vetoes and then by criminal 
hindrances.'' ' Sumner's lax interpretation of any 
constitutional provision which seemed to stand in 
the way of reaching what he thought to be justice 
received repeated illustration: " Show me an act 
of evil example or influence committed by a Presi- 
dent, and I show you an impeachable offense." He 
asserted that the court of impeachment was not 
to be confined by " the rigid rules of the common 
law," but had " rules of its own, unknown to ordi- 
nary courts." " The ordinary rule of evidence is 
reversed. If on any point you entertain doubts, 
the benefit of those doubts must be given [not to 
the accused but] to your country." The President 
"must show that his longer continuance in office is 
not inconsistent with the public safety." He re- 
ferred to Johnson's loose speech and intemperate 
habits with a deliberate and brutal frankness such 
as he had earlier directed against Butler and Mason. 
He declared : ' ' This is a political proceeding, 
which the people at this moment are as competent 
to decide as this Senate. They are the multitudi- 
nous jury. . . . In nothing can we escape their 
judgment, least of all on a question like that now 
before us." 

The vote upon the impeachment charges lacked 
one of the number necessary to convict. Sumner 
found solace in declaring: "The President was 
saved by the skin of his teeth. He was saved by 
one vote. I call it a nominal acquittal. There 

1 Dewitt, pp. 584-585. 



326 CHARLES SUMNEE 

is ... a moral judgment against him." Yet 
it was soon recognized even by Republican leaders, 
that the attempted impeachment had been unwise 
and that the large vote for conviction was to be 
attributed to party feeling rather than to the 
strength of the case against Johnson. Sumner 
often showed rare gifts of foresight, but he never 
dreamed that within forty years of his fierce on- 
slaught upon Johnson there would be general ac- 
quiescence in the verdict of the judicious historian, 
Mr. James Ford Rhodes: "The impeachment 
managers did not prove their charges and the 
minority of the Senate undoubtedly gave a 
righteous judgment. . . . The glory of the 
trial was the action of the seven recusant sena- 
tors.'' Sumner's intense feeling and extravagant 
language must be attributed to his disappointment 
at Johnson's general policy as to reconstruction, 
and in particular to his shift as to equal suffrage, 
which in Sumner's opinion was then the one all- 
engrossing need. In this lay Johnson's " bare-faced 
treachery" ; it was this which made him the one 
" enormous criminal" of his century. 

In the closing mouths of Johnson's administra- 
tion, financial matters occupied much of the atten- 
tion of Congress. Under the exigencies of the war, 
the public debt had mounted to appalling propor- 
tions, and various measures intended to ease if not 
to evade that burden met with favor both before 
the public and in Congress. Some of these, partic- 
ularly the widely-advocated scheme for redeeming 



JOHNSON AND RECONSTRUCTION 327 

national bonds in legal tender notes, seemed to New 
England business men to involve serious menaee to 
the public credit, and it was at their earnest in- 
sistence that Sumner undertook to deal with the 
subject. With little taste for the study of problems 
of public finance, Sumner nevertheless showed a 
keen insight into the best sources of information, 
and sound sense and growing skill in handling such 
matters. In the middle of July he made a compre- 
hensive and temperate speech in the Senate, in 
which he emphasized the fundamental importance 
of safeguarding against even suspicion the public 
credit, and strongly opposed any proposition to re- 
deem national bonds in anything else than coin. 
He advocated the funding of the public debt in 
long-term bonds, and the simplification of the in- 
ternal revenue system, and urged a prompt return 
to specie payments. This speech was of salutary 
influence in the Senate — where even Sherman, 
chairman of the Senate Committee on Finance, had 
given a qualified approval to the "Ohio idea" of 
redeeming national bonds in greenbacks 1 — and be- 
fore the country, greatly strengthening Sumner's 
reputation among conservative men of affairs. A 
few months later, they were somewhat aghast to 
hear Sumner advocating the resumption of specie 
payments at as early a date as July 4, 1869. Hav- 
ing convinced himself that such a step was right, it 
was characteristic of him to underestimate the 
reasons which were to delay it for ten years. 

X E. P. Oberholtzer, Life of Jay Cooke, Vol. II, p. 39 



328 CHARLES SUMNER 

In the closing session of the Fortieth Congress, 
1868-9, the Fifteenth Amendment was much under 
discussion. To the surprise of his colleagues, Sum- 
ner did not take an ardent interest in this measure. 
In the first place, he believed it unnecessary, hold- 
ing the view — which few shared — that Congress 
already had adequate power to prevent discrimina- 
tions because of race or color as to the suffrage. 
Moreover, he feared that the agitation of the pro- 
posed amendment, by convincing the states that 
they still had the power to make the offensive dis- 
criminations, would prevent the ratification of the 
Amendment and lead to worse discriminations in 
the future. He insisted that any further amend- 
ment ought to be broad enough to comprehend all 
civil and political rights, and not merely the ballot. 
In his speeches he again set forth his startling 
thesis that " anything for human rights is constitu- 
tional," and inveighed against those who tried to 
emphasize the constitutional autonomy of the states 
as if they were " states rights" men of secession 
days. Yet after the amendment had secured the 
approval of Congress, he gave it hearty support. 



CHAPTER XVI 

SUMNER AND GRANT : THE SAN DOMINGO ISSUE 

Even before the end of the war it became evident 
that General Grant would make the strongest 
candidate for the presidency in 1868. To be sure, 
his political affiliations were somewhat in doubt : 
his last vote had been cast for Buchanan, but con- 
troversy with Johnson, whose principal defenders 
were among the Democrats, probably now led 
Grant to align himself with the Republicans. To a 
man of Sumner's character and career, and of his 
repugnance to war, the candidacy of a man of no 
proved capacity for the tasks of civil government 
and whose sole ground for fame was his dis- 
tinguished military service, could not make a 
strong appeal. A year before the election was to 
take place, the political situation was discussed at 
an informal gathering of eight or ten senators, 
representatives and army men in Washington. 
Every man present, with the exception of Sumner, 
favored Grant's nomination ; but Sumner earnestly 
opposed the choice, insisting that far from strength- 
ening the party, it would be a confession of weak- 
ness. l Although the Massachusetts senator acqui- 
esced in the nomination when made and nowhere in 

1 Cincinnati Commercial, Jnlv 19, 1891, gives account of this 
conference of Nov. 6, 1867. Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 358. 



330 CHARLES SUMMER 

public letter or speech opposed it, it is probable 
that Grant knew from one of the men present at 
that early conference — an intimate friend of the 
general, who later did him much harm as an ad- 
viser and tale-bearer — of Sumner's disbelief in his 
qualifications for the presidency, and that this 
knowledge affected his attitude toward the senator. 
Sumner's nomination to succeed himself was made 
by acclamation in the state convention, and in the 
legislature a few months later he was reelected for a 
fourth term by a vote almost unprecedented for its 
unanimity. 1 Massachusetts took pride in Sumner 
who was now to be the senior member of the Senate 
in length of service. Since the beginniug of the war 
he had been its most conspicuous leader ; his dis- 
tinguished service as chairman of the Committee on 
Foreign Relations, the conversion of the Senate to 
his reconstruction policies, and his skilful handling 
of matters of publie finance had all combined to 
bring him high prestige. In the mind of the pub- 
lic, he measured up to the standard of the old Sen- 
ate, in the days when " there were giants in the 
land." His name had been much canvassed in con- 
nection with other positions. In 1864 Lincoln was 
considering a change in the State Department and 
led Sumner to believe that he would have been 
obliged to decide whether he would supersede Sew- 
ard, had the President lived. Lincoln may well 
have thought that this would at once give him an 
effective Secretary of State and remove from the 
'Senate, 37 to 2 ; House, 216 to 16. 



THE SAN DOMINGO ISSUE 331 

Senate the chief obstacle to his reconstruction pol- 
icy. At the time when it seemed likely that con- 
viction in the impeachment trial would make Wade 
President, he talked over jjossible appointments 
confidentially with Sumner, and it was believed that 
he intended him for the head of the Department of 
State. 1 This position as well as that of Minister to 
the Court of St. James was mooted after Grant's 
election was assured. But it is doubtful whether 
Sumner would have accepted any such change. As 
he wrote to Lieber : " The headship of the first com- 
mittee of the Senate is equal in position to anything 
in our government under the President ; and it 
leaves to the senator great opportunities. " 

On the evening following Grant's inauguration, 
Sumner entertained at dinner two friends of many 
years' standing, Hamilton Fish and John Lothrop 
Motley, the historian. In the genial flow of that 
evening's conversation, little did Sumner and Fish 
suspect that there were soon to arise between them 
misunderstandings and controversies which were to 
embitter the remaining years of Sumner's life. 

Entirely inexperienced in civic affairs, the new 



1 The assurance that Johnson was about to be removed from 
office appears in many of the letters from Sumner's correspond- 
ents. Edward Atkinson feared that Wade was so unsound on 
the currency question that his succession to the presidency 
would be of doubtful benefit. F. W. Bird and others urge 
Sumner, if he is to head Wade's cabinet, to postpone his accept- 
ance of the position until the final adjournment of the theu 
Massachusetts legislature, from whom they feared that the 
election of a worthy senator could not be secured. (Sumner 
Corr., Harvard Library.) 



332 CHARLES SUMNER 

President made his appointments without consulting 
senators or representatives, and in many cases seems 
to have been guided solely by his personal acquaint- 
ance or by the judgment of intimate friends, mostly 
connected with the army. Thus, to the position of 
Secretary of the Treasury he appointed A. T. 
Stewart, the New York millionaire merchant. In 
the Senate the point was raised that Stewart was 
disqualified for this office under the Act of the First 
Congress which expressly excluded any person "di- 
rectly or indirectly concerned in carrying on the 
business of trade or commerce." An attempt was 
made forthwith to repeal this disqualifying clause, 
and later, at Grant's formal request, to pass an act 
exempting Stewart from the application of this Act. 
Both of these projects were blocked by objections 
interposed by Sumner, who insisted that such un- 
precedented action ought not to be taken hastily or 
without profound consideration. When once atten- 
tion was directed to what was involved, enough 
senators were found to agree with Sumner's view to 
make prompt confirmation improbable; Stewart's 
name was accordingly withdrawn. Judge E. Rock- 
wood Hoar was called from the Supreme Court of 
Massachusetts to the position of Attorney-General. 
The post of Secretary of State was awarded to E. B. 
Washburne as a compliment, to be held but for a 
week. When the permanent appointment was an- 
nounced, it came as a surprise both to the public 
and to the nominee, himself. The President's choice 
for his chief official adviser fell upon Hamilton Fish, 



THE SAN DOMINGO ISSUE 333 

whose guest he had from time to time been in New 
York. Fish had high standing in the financial centre 
of the country, and Grant may well have felt that a 
conservative New York man would prove a desirable 
element in his cabinet as a partial offset to others of a 
very different type. Moreover, Fish was not without 
experieuce in public life : he had served one term each 
as governor of New York, as representative in Con- 
gress, and as senator, taking his seat in 1851 at the 
same time with Sumner j but each of these terms of 
service was ended without exceptional distinction. 

His record was not of a nature to commend him to 
Republicans at the polls. During all the Kansas- 
Nebraska debates in the Senate, Fish had had not 
one word to say ; on the question of the repeal of the 
Fugitive Slave Law, he once voted to sustain the 
law and two years later withheld his vote. He had 
been thoroughly out of accord with Seward, par- 
ticularly upon the latter' s policy toward slavery, 
and confessed that only after " much embarrassment 
in determining the course which duty required" 
did he bring himself to vote for the Republican 
candidates in 1856. His later attitude toward the 
party had been unenthusiastic and sharply critical. 
In 1863, in urging Sumner to use his influence to se- 
cure a higher grade of appointments in the diplo- 
matic service he wrote: " I see country and gov- 
ernment and nationality fading and passing away 
amid the riot of vulgarity, violence and corruption, 
and under the rule of imbecility and vacillation." x 
1 Jan. 27, 1863. Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 377. 



334 CHARLES SUMMER 

In their old days together in the Senate, despite 
his disappointment at Fish's lack of sympathy with 
his anti-slavery efforts, Sumner had early formed 
an intimacy with his colleague, and no guest was 
more welcome in the New York senator's home, 
where in Mrs. Fish Sumner found a high-minded 
friend who followed each step of his career in the 
cause of freedom with ardent sympathy and encour- 
agement. After Fish's retirement from the Senate 
Sumner kept up a correspondence with him, and 
visited him often in New York City and at his coun- 
try home. He was admitted into family confidences 
such as are open only to the closest intimates, was 
pressed with thanks for letters which brought to the 
Fishes the hospitalities of Sumner's best friends 
abroad, was sought out by them for a call of loving 
sympathy when he was undergoing the moxa in 
Paris, and most warmly welcomed upon his return 
to America. To Sumner, therefore, the announce- 
ment of Fish's appointment was most gratifying. 
Hardly a week had passed since that dinner at Sum- 
ner's house, when he received a confidential letter 
from Fish, stating that he had reluctantly de- 
cided to go to Washington "to undertake duties for 
which I have little taste and less fitness. . . . 
In yielding, I hoped that I could rely upon your 
friendship and your experience and ability, for your 
support and aid to supply my manifold deficien- 
cies." In genuinely pathetic vein, the letter dwells 
upon his great reluctance to accept the position, and 
ends with a request that Sumner come to see him 



THE SAN DOMINGO ISSUE 335 

before it should be necessary for hiui to attend a 
cabinet meeting. 1 

In the first months of the new administration 
Sumner's relations were cordial both with the Presi- 
dent and with his Secretary of State. As might be 
inferred from Fish's comments on appointments 
made during Lincoln's first term, he and Sumner 
were in hearty accord as to the type of men desirable 
in the diplomatic service. Fish continued to seek 
Sumner's counsel, not only as to appointments but 
as to difficult questions which arose within the de- 
partment ; indeed, this intimacy was noted as quite 
beyond precedent between men occupying their re- 
spective official positions. Secretary Fish at first 
found his new office far from congenial j he wrote to 
Sumner that he most sincerely wished himself out 
of the department. He intended to withdraw before 
the meeting of Congress, but in midsummer reluc- 
tantly determined to fill out one year of service. 

By far the heaviest responsibility that devolved 
upon the State Department when Fish came to its 
head was the adjustment of the differences with 
Great Britain ; and his task was greatly complicated 
by the mistakes made under the previous adminis 
tration. In the summer of 1868, Eeverdy Johnson, 
a senator from Maryland, had been appointed Min- 
ister to England. He was an able lawyer, and, 
though lacking in diplomatic experience, was 
unanimously confirmed as a more satisfactory selec- 
tion than any other likely to be made by President 
1 March 13, 1869. Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 379. 



336 CHARLES SUMNER 

Johnson. But in England he showed little discre- 
tion. He was enamored of his own speechmaking 
and he soon disgusted Americans by the friendliness 
of his advances toward those who had aided the 
Confederates. It was not Sew r ard's expectation that 
he would concern himself with the great subjects of 
controversy then pending between the United States 
and England ; but, notwithstanding the fact that in 
November the administration to which he owed his 
appointment had been thoroughly discredited at the 
polls, he assumed to negotiate a treaty covering the 
grievances of the United States against England. 
This Johnson-Clarendon Convention, dated January 
14, 1869, was in the hands of the Committee on For- 
eign Relations when the new administration came 
into power. Under the circumstances, the most 
critical appointment to the diplomatic service was 
that of Minister to the Court of St. James, and for 
this post the selection fell upon John Lothrop Mot- 
ley. His name had been suggested by Sumner in a 
list with several other possible appointees for foreign 
posts, and there is no doubt that Sumner's friend- 
ship for the man and his characteristic overvaluation 
of literary distinction enlisted him strongly in Mot 
ley's support. But that he was " Sumner's man, 
and appointed principally because of his urgent so- 
licitation, there is little ground to believe. 1 Motley 

•G. S. Boutwell, in Sixty Years of Public Life, Vol. II, p. 214. 
asserts that Grant told him: "Such was my impression of 
Motley when I saw him that I should have withheld his ap- 
pointment, if I had not made a promise to Sumner." 



n 



THE SAN DOMINGO ISSUE 337 

had enjoyed pleasant relations with Fish for many 
years ; in the recent campaign he had made a bril- 
liant speech highly eulogistic of Grant, and in the 
month preceding the inauguration he had been 
thrown much in Grant's society at Washington. 
That Sumner's support was a mere incident in pro- 
curing an appointment which was natural both be- 
cause of Motley's friendship with Grant and with 
Fish, and because of his international reputation as 
the historian of the Dutch Eepublic, is the more 
probable from the fact that the appointment of 
Dr. Howe as Minister to Greece, which Sumner did 
most earnestly urge, was refused. 

On the 12th of April Motley's nomination was 
confirmed by the Senate, and on the following day 
he was commissioned as Minister to England. On 
that same day Sumner presented the adverse report 
from his committee upon the Johnson-Clarendon 
Convention. This agreement had secured the ap- 
proval of not a single member of the committee, 
although Sumner had urged its most careful consid- 
eration, declaring, as the committee's vote was 
about to be taken : " We begin to-day an interna- 
tional debate, the greatest of our history, and, be- 
fore it is finished, in all probability the greatest of 
all history." Since the beginning of the war Sum- 
ner had been doing his utmost to allay unreasonable 
passion against England ; but during these years 
his sense of the injury inflicted upon the United 
States had not grown less. Probably it would have 
been better if Sumner had kept silent. It was 



338 CHARLES SUMMER 

known that the convention stood not the slightest 
chance of being ratified but as Fessenden caustically 
remarked: "It was not possible for Sumner to 
omit to avail himself of such an occasion. 1 ' ' In his 
present speech he criticized the pending convention 
as utterly inadequate in that it provided only for the 
settlement of individual claims, made no expression 
of regret for injuries of the past, declared no past rule 
of international duty and laid down no such rule for 
the future. He directed the severest condemnation 
against England's precipitate concession of ocean 
belligerency, the Queen's proclamation having been 
issued on the very day of the new minister's arrival, 
as if to forestall any negotiations he might be au- 
thorized to make. He therefore grouped our griev- 
ances under three heads : The first consisted of the 
claims of individuals for damages wrought by the 
Alabama and other cruisers ; upon these he accepted 
Cobden's estimate of $15,000,000. For a second 
claim for ''damages to commerce driven from the 
ocean" he suggested that the compensation should 
be $110,000,000. There still remained " that other 
damage, immense and infinite, caused by the pro- 
longation of the war, all of which may be called 
national in contradistinction to individual." These 
" national claims," which he was here the first offi- 
cially to advance, and which were to be for years 
much in controversy, he did not venture to estimate ; 
but he did declare that the cost of suppressing the 
rebellion had been more than $4,000,000,000, and 

l J. B. Moore, International Arbitrations, Vol. I, p. 508. 



THE SAN DOMINGO ISSUE 339 

that through British dereliction, largely in the con- 
cession of belligerent rights upon the ocean, the war 
had been u doubled in duration. . . . England 
is justly responsible for the additional expenditure.' ' 

This speech of an hour, which probably changed 
not a single vote on the pending treaty, played no 
small part in the later controversy. 

What Sumner here sought to accomplish, as Carl 
Schurz later declared, was ' ' not to extort from Eng- 
land a large sum of money, but to put our grievance 
in the strongest light ; to convince England of the 
great wrong she had inflicted upon us and thus pre- 
pare a composition which, consisting more in the 
settlement of great principles and rules of inter- 
national law to govern the future intercourse of 
nations than in the payment of large damages, would 
remove all questions of difference." * The conven- 
tion was rejected in the Senate by a vote of fifty-four 
to one. Sumner's speech, as the British minister 
reported to his government, was "received with 
vehement applause by the whole Republican press." 
It certainly accorded with popular sentiment, which 
was still sore at the attitude and action of the British 
government during the war. Sumner had con- 
sulted with Grant before the speech and received 
his thanks and congratulations after it. 2 He also 

1 Eulogy on Sumner, Massachusetts Memorial of Charles Sumner , 
p 234. 

2 Letter to Longfellow, May 25, 1869. Even so discriminating 
a critic an Lowell wrote to Sumner within ten days after the 
speech : "I think you have struck exactly the true note — ex- 
pressing the national feeling with temper and dignity." (April 



340 CHAELES SUMNER 

had assurance of Secretary Fish's general accord- 
ance with the positions which he had there taken. 

Though Sumner considered that his speech was 
" pacific" in tone, it had a very different sound to 
others. In England it aroused intense bitterness. 
Even John Bright, who throughout the war had 
been carrying on a most intimate and sympathetic 
correspondence with Sumner for the purpose of 
preventing any injury from England to the North- 
ern cause, now declared that he u supposed the 
speech was Sumner's bid for the presidency r and 
that he (Sumner) " was either a fool himself, or else 
thought the English public and their public men 
were fools." The question was on every one's lips, 
What does he intend shall be the outcome? Sum- 
ner called England to an accounting for damages 
"immense and infinite," yet urged neither haste 
nor force. Charles Francis Adams probably pene- 
trated the mystery, when he declared that intima- 
tions had been made to him that "the end of it all 

22d. Sumner Corr. MS., Harvard Library.) But another ten 
days had not passed before misgivings arose. To E. L. Godkiu 
he wrote : "I fear it was not a wise speech. "Was lie not try- 
ing rather to chime in with that [national] feeling, than to give 
it a juster and manlier direction ? " (May 2d. Letters, Vol. 
II, p. 29. See also pp. 2(5, 41.) But it was not Sumner's habit 
to try to " chime in with " others' feelings or beliefs. If he is to 
be blamed, it is for bias and one-sidedness rather than for lack 
of independence or of purpose to lead in the light direction. Of 
this speech Rhodes says: "'Of all the outrageous claims of 
which our diplomatic annals are full, I can call to mind none 
more so than this." He emphasizes the fact that the " pacific " 
tone of its conclusion by no means accords with the main body 
of the speech which was distinctly exasperating. Vol. VI, 
p. 339. 



THE SAN DOMINGO ISSUE 341 

was to be the annexation of Canada by way of full 
indemnity." ' 

In the summer of 1865 Grant had indicated that 
he regarded Great Britain's conduct duriug the war 
as a grievous wrong to the United States ; and his 
notions of compensation were restrained neither by 
Sumner's love for England nor by Sumner's hatred 
for war. Only a few months after Lee's surrender, 
he told Sumner that he " cared little whether Eng- 
land paid ' our little bill ' or not ; upon the whole, 
he would rather she should not, as that would leave 
the precedent of her conduct in full force for us to 
follow, and he wished it understood that we should 
follow it. He thought we should make more out of 
' the precedent' than out of ' the bill,' and thought 
Boston especially would gain." 2 

But although the President held England to be 
grievously in our debt, and although he was a 
zealous expansionist, and believed that Canada 
could be secured by a short campaign, if war should 
ensue, and that in such a war we should have little 
to fear, his interest was now engrossed in quite an- 
other quarter. For some time an insurrection had 
been in progress in Cuba, and President Grant's 
sympathies were warmly enlisted in behalf of the 
insurgents. On June 9, 1869, Sumner had a long 
conference with the President, who proposed issu- 

1 Quoted by C. P. Adams in The Treaty of Washington, p. 103. 
This is the most comprehensive and painstaking study upon 
this subject. 

3 Letter from Sumner to Bright, Aug. 8, 1865, Pierce, Vol, 
IV, p. 255. 



342 CHARLES SUMNER 

ing in aid of the Cubans a proclamation " identical 
with that issued by Spain with regard to us." > 
.Later in the day Sumner called upon Fish, who 
had just been conferring with the British minister, 
and told Sumner that he had said to him "that our 
claims were too large to be settled pecuniarily, and 
sounded him about Canada, to which he replied that 
England did not wish to keep Canada, but could not 
part with it, without the consent of the [Canadian] 
population." 2 

Grant and Sumner were now at one in thinking 
that England had done us grievous wrong, for 
which the cession of British America would not be 
too great a compensation, and in being willing that 
the matter stand in an unsettled state, awaiting it 
might be a time when Canadian sentiment should 
approve a separation which the British government 
already looked upon with favor. But, on the other 
hand, Grant and Sumner were as far apart as the 
poles on this point : Sumner traced the root of 
England's wrong to the United States to that " fatal 
precedent," the Queen's proclamation conceding 
belligerent rights upon the ocean to the Confeder- 



1 Sumner, in letter to Motley, June 11. 1869. More- 
over, this purpose he actually carried out, for late in the 
summer he drew up and signed such a proclamation, and 
sent it to Fish with orders to issue it; but Fish " put it away in 
a safe place," and in the course of a few days events had 
crowded in, which led Grant to be exceedingly grateful that 
Fish's conservatism had protected his administration from the 
mistakes into which his impetuous action was on the point of 
plunging it. C. F. Adams, p. 118. 

'Sumner, letter to Motley, as above. 



THE SAN DOMINGO ISSUE 343 

ates, while at this very moment the President's heart 
was set upon issuing a precisely similar proclama- 
tion in behalf of the Cubans. 

But other complications were already in sight. 
Although balked in his Cuban programme, the 
President was not deterred from looking into an- 
other opportunity for Southern expansion, presented 
by the disordered conditions in San Domingo. For 
the moment, the adventurer, Baez, was in power in 
this pseudo-republic ; but, not having enough force 
at his command to subdue the rival with whom for 
years he had been playing see-saw in government, 
he was doing his best to enlist the active interven- 
tion of the United States in his behalf. For some 
unknown reason, Grant held fantastically extrava- 
gant notions as to the resources and strategic im- 
portance of the island, and the project of a protect- 
orate if not of annexation early secured his ardent 
support. A month after that day of earnest confer- 
ences over British claims and Cuban belligerency, 
the President sent one of his military favorites, 
Babcock, upon a man-of-war, with instructions 
which upon their face merely authorized him to 
make full inquiry into the resources of the island, 
the characteristics of the people and their views as 
to annexation. Nevertheless, the Secretary of the 
Navy ordered the commander of this war vessel to 
give Babcock " the moral support of his guns," and 
a month later a second war vessel was despatched 
to be at his service. In September this personal 
envoy returned, bearing a "protocol" which he 



344 CHAKLES SUMNER 

had assumed to negotiate for the annexation of the 
republic of San Domingo to the United States upon 
payment by the latter of 81,500,000. The most 
astounding thing in this unprecedented document 
was the pledge that " his Excellency, General 
Grant, President of the United States, promises 
privately to use all his influence in order that the 
idea of annexing the Dominican republic to the 
United States may acquire such a degree of popu- 
larity among members of Congress as will be neces- 
sary for its accomplishment." ! A year or more 
later, President Grant declared: "General Bab- 
cock's conduct throughout merits my entire ap- 
proval." 2 After conferences in Washington, Bab- 
cock returned to Dominica, under instructions from 
Fish and with a naval force under orders to " con- 
form to all his wishes." On the 3d of December he 
concluded a treaty for the annexation of San Do- 
mingo and another for the lease of the Bay of 
Samana. 

Meantime our relations with England had been 
getting more complicated. As a result of many 
conferences between Fish and Sumner, Motley's in- 
structions had been framed. The task was made 
difficult by the President's wish to concede bellig- 
erency to the Cuban insurgents, and by the feeling 
which had been aroused in England by Sumner's 
speech in its arraignment of the British government 
while the French emperor escaped his condemna- 

■N. Y. Times, June 28, 1870. Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 430. 
■ Letter to Senator Nye, June 27, 1870, 



THE SAX DOMINGO ISSUE 345 

tion. The instructions were therefore so phrased as 
to recognize " the right of a power to define its re- 
lations to the parties in a civil conflict in another 
country," but they refused to admit the propriety 
of the Queen's proclamation, directing especial 
reprobation against it as " the beginning and animus 
of that course of conduct which resulted so disas- 
trously to the United States," and as "foreshadow- 
ing future events." Furthermore, the instructions 
laid stress upon the fact that, while other powers 
were contemporaneous with England in similar 
concession, " it was in England only that the con- 
cession was supplemented by acts causing direct 
damage to the United States." l The diplomatic 
slate had been wiped clean of all previous writing 
by the rejection of the Johnson -Clarendon Conven- 
tion. In midsummer (July 19th) Sumner wrote to 
Cushing : "It seems best that our case, in length 
and breadth, with all details, should be stated to 
England without any demand of any kind. Eng- 
land must know our grievances before any demand 
can be presented." 

Sumner was Fish's guest at his country home in 
August and urged that the statement of our claims 
be again brought to the notice of the British gov- 
ernment. On September 25, 1869, Fish sent to 
Motley a despatch, drawn by Caleb Cushing, which 
summarized the points of our case in such a way 
that British public men declared it was "Mr. 
Sumner's speech over again," and that it " out- 
1 J. B. Moore, International Arbitrations, Vol. I, p. 513. 



346 CHAELES SUMNER 

Simmered Sumner." The prospects of success of 
the Cuban insurgents had dwindled so that their 
recognition as belligerents was not now to be thought 
of. No longer restrained by that consideration, the 
President did not hesitate to insert in his annual 
message passages held in England to be decidedly 
menacing. In these he listed the American claims, 
not confining them to injuries to individuals, but 
closely following the enumeration of what Sumner 
had called " national claims," even including the 
increased rates of insurance, the decrease and trans- 
fer to Great Britain of our commercial marine, and 
' ' the prolongation of the war and the increased cost 
(both iu treasure and in lives) of its suppression." 

Despite this apparent agreement, some tension 
had already arisen between Sumner and the Presi- 
dent and his Secretary of State. There had been 
differences of opinion as to the instructions to be 
given to Motley, and Sumner had assumed a 
dominating tone which Fish found none the less 
galling from the fact that his own deference to Sn in- 
ner upon taking office made it not unnatural. " Is 
it the purpose of this administration to sacrifice me. 
— me, a senator from Massachusetts?" was Sum- 
ner's outraged inquiry, and later, in dissenting from 
a plan of the Secretary's, he declared : "I ought not 
in any way to be a party to a statement which 
abandons or enfeebles any of the just grounds of my 
country as already expounded by Seward, Adams 
and myself." Whether he had been especially in- 
sistent in urging Motley's appointment or not, there 



THE SAN DOMINGO ISSUE 347 

can be uo question that in Sumner's frequent and 
very voluminous letters, that minister found exposi- 
tions of his duty and of American policy quite as 
direct and detailed as those received from the Secre- 
tary of State. Soon after Motley's appointment, 
Charles Francis Adams made the shrewd prophecy 
that the new minister would meet with one em- 
barrassment which he himself had never had to en- 
counter ; — he would have to deal with two masters. 
And so at London it was presently found that Mot- 
ley was representing Charles Sumner more distinctly 
than the Grant administration. In his very first 
interview with Lord Clarendon, he laid great stress 
upon the grievous offense involved in the proclama- 
tion of belligerency, a point which Fish believed 
Sumner's speech had overstrained and the very 
point which Grant at just that juncture was partic- 
ularly anxious to have kept in the background. 1 
On June 7th, so Sumner reported to Motley, Grant 
declared that he was satisfied Motley was ' k the best 
man for England." But the President, whose 
chronology is not always accurate, later declared 
that on receipt of Motley's report of this interview 

1 How widely and exasperatiugly Motley in this interview 
departed from the spirit of his instructions and voiced Sumner's 
distinctive views is clearly brought out by J. B. Moore. 
(International Arbitrations, Vol. I, pp. 516-518.) Motley later 
asserted that he had sincerely endeavored to carry out his in- 
structions. But the eminent historian surely showed here little 
skill as a diplomatist. " Instead of refraining from discussion, 
he precipitated it, suggesting ' the contingencies of war and 
peace ' and confessing to a ' despondent feeling ' as to the ' pos- 
sibility of the two nations ever understanding each other.' " 



348 CHAELES SUMNER 

— three weeks later than the above expression of ap- 
proval — he was u very angry," and " went over to 
the State Department and told Governor Fish to 
dismiss Motley at once." This Fish did not do, but 
he presently gave Motley to understand that the 
entire diseussion of the claims against Great Britain 
was transferred to Washington. To Sumner it was 
intimated that the reason for this step was that the 
Senate was there accessible for advice, and that in 
Washington there would be better prospect of 
securing a settlement " than where the late attempt 
at a convention resulted so disastrously." A year 
later, however, Fish declared that the change was 
made because of Motley's disobedience to instruc- 
tions. It may be doubted whether his offense had 
reached that point, but there can be no question 
that the Secretary felt himself embarrassed by a 
minister who reflected so clearly Sumner's distinct- 
ive views, and that he determined to take the 
negotiation into his own hands and carry it through 
according to his own ideas. 

President Graut's offhand announcement in 
cabinet meeting of Babcock's negotiation of the 
protocol for the annexation of San Domingo had 
met with a most embarrassing reception ; and Fish, 
on general principles not favorably disposed to an- 
nexation toward the south, was in addition so af- 
fronted by the negotiation of a treaty without tak- 
ing him, the head of the State Department, into 
consultation, that he pressed his resignation upon 
Grant, who earnestly besought him to retain his 



THE SAN DOMIXGO ISSUE 349 

portfolio, and finally secured his support even for the 
San Domingo project. Undaunted by these experi- 
ences, Grant now set out to secure the ratification of 
his treaties. He knew that Sumner was in position 
to have more inliuence than any other man upon the 
result, and with characteristic directness and igno- 
rance of, or contempt for, formal procedure, he 
sought to assure himself of the senator's sirpport. 
Early in January, 1870, Sumner was entertaining- 
two friends one evening at dinner, when the Presi- 
dent of the United States called. Eecognizing the 
voice at the door, Sumner himself left the dining- 
room, and presently returned with Grant, who took 
a seat at the table, insisting that the other guests re- 
main. The conversation which ensued was singu- 
larly maladroit on both sides. The President 
promptly introduced his errand by saying that there 
were two treaties relating to San Domingo about 
which he had wished to speak with the senator (to 
whom he four times referred as u chairman of the 
Judiciary Committee''), since they were soon to 
come before his committee. Sumner, unwilling to 
give his opinion in advance of investigation, sought 
to divert the conversation to another topic, and by 
ill chance chose this occasion to broach the case of 
Governor Ashley, and even to read a long letter 
from the man, whom Grant had recently removed 
from the governorship of Montana Territory. This 
subject was highly distasteful to Grant and in 
evident annoyance he started to take his leave. 
Sumner followed him to the door, and, the matter 



350 CHARLES SUMNER 

of the treaties having again been raised by the 
President, though without explaining their nature, 
Sumner said : u Mr. President, I am an adminis- 
tration man, and whatever you do will always hud 
in me the most careful and candid consideration." ' 
The whole interview embarrassed Sumner, than 
whom no man was ever less ready to commit him- 
self without full knowledge of what was at issue. 
But Grant's make-up was of a different nature. He 
had dropped in on Sumner that evening to secure 
his support, and he left his door in the belief that 
this " chairman of the Judiciary Committee M stood 
pledged to uphold his chief's policy. 

A few days later the two treaties came before the 
Committee on Foreign Relations. Sumner was not 
on principle opposed to expansion, though he hoped 
for expansion to the north, which would include 
people of English stock, rather than in the tropics. 
At first, therefore, his prime concern was as to the 
effect which the annexation of San Domingo would 
have upon the other negro republic upon the island, 
and also upon the newly emancipated negroes of 
this country. But some of the despatches led him 
to suspect what a visit to the State Department 
speedily confirmed, — that these treaties had been 
negotiated with a ruler who maintained himself in 
power only by his reliance upon United States ships 



1 Sumner gave an account of this interview in his speech in 
Senate, Dec. 21, 1870, Congressional Globe, p. 253. Works, 
Vol. XIV, pp. 125, 126. Other references, Pierce, Vol. IV, 
p. 434, n. 2. 



THE SAN DOMINGO ISSUE 351 

of war, and that therefore we were " engaged in 
forcing upon a weak people the sacrifice of their 
country.'' From the moment of that discovery, 
the whole transaction became utterly repugnant to 
Sumner ; but he made the mistake — which he after- 
ward acknowledged and regretted — of not going 
directly to the President and telling him frankly 
that he could not give the treaties his support. 
They were before the committee nearly two months. 
Grant grew restive at the delay, and presently came 
to believe that Sumner was the obstruction in the 
way of a prompt and favorable report. Accustomed 
to command, his zeal and determination became the 
greater at the unexpected opposition. He sent to 
the Senate special messages urging ratification, and 
proceeded to exert executive pressure upon individ- 
ual members of the committee and other senators 
to a degree before entirely unknown. He went re- 
peatedly to the Capitol and on a single day sum- 
moned fourteen senators to meet him. Babcock 
appeared before the committee to answer inquiries. 
On March 15th, the day following one of Grant's 
most urgent messages, the committee presented an 
adverse report, in which five members concurred ; 
only two dissented. 

Mne days later the debate on the San Domingo 
question was opened by Sumner. In a four-hour 
speech he set forth the committee's grounds for op- 
posing the ratification of the treaties. Wishiug as 
far as possible to avoid any clash with the adminis- 
tration, he laid no emphasis upon the unwarranted 



352 CHARLES SUMNER 

use of United States naval power in Dominican 
waters (upon which he was not so well informed as 
at a later date) and he was careful not to impugn in 
the slightest respect the President's motives in ur- 
ging annexation. The points upon which he did lay 
stress were the unsuitableness of the Dominican pop- 
ulation for easy assimilation ; the bad precedent of 
annexation toward the tropics, with the probability 
of complications with Hayti ; the chronic civil war to 
which the " republic" was subject ; and the wrong in- 
volved in " impairing the African's predominance in 
the West Indies. ' ' The treaties were before the Sen- 
ate for three months. Meantime the President again 
by special message urged their ratification, and the 
Secretary of State came repeatedly to Sumner's 
house and besought him to support the treaties be- 
cause the President, who had led the Republican 
party to victory, had them so much at heart. In 
one of these interviews he said to Sumner : " Why 
not go to London ? I offer you the English mission ; 
it is yours." Sumner secretly resented this as an 
attempt to silence him, and replied : ' * We have a 
minister who cannot be bettered." ' But no un- 
worthy motive need be attributed to Fish ; the 
appointment would have placed his old-time friend 
in a congenial position of great honor and influence 
and have secured peace to the administration. 

J June, 1870, a few weeks before the rejection of the treaty. 
Sumner adds to his account : " Thus already did the mission to 
London begin to pivot on San Domingo." Works, Vol. XIV, 
p. 260. 






THE SAN DOMINGO ISSUE 353 

There was little popular sentiment in favor of an- 
nexation, and Sumner was at no time doubtful as to 
the outcome. On the last day of June the vote was ta- 
ken and resulted in a tie, twenty- eight to twenty- 
eight, so that, lacking the requisite two-thirds, the 
treaties were rejected. The very day after this vote, 
by direction of the President, Motley's resignation 
was requested. He refused to give it, and some 
months later was summarily removed. There was 
little doubt in any quarter that his removal was due 
primarily to Grant's resentment at Sumner's oppo- 
sition to the San Domingo treaties in the Senate. 
Unable to hit the offender in person, he aimed his 
blow at the man who he declared " represented Sum- 
ner more than he did the administration." In cabi- 
net meeting he asserted that he did not propose to 
" allow Sumner to ride over him," and when it was 
suggested that he appoint Sumner to the English 
mission, he said that he would do it provided Suni- 
ner would resign from the Senate, but that he would 
remove him as soon as his appointment had been 
confirmed ! 



CHAPTEE XVII 

SUMNER AND GRANT : THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON 

During the recess of Congress, Sumner and Fish 
continued in friendly correspondence. 1 But months 
before this, — in fact, within a few weeks of the time 
when Motley laid down the law to Lord Clarendon, — 
Fish had been discussing our claims against Eng- 
land with Sir John Rose, u a born diplomatist," 
who, as a member of the Canadian ministry, had 
come to Washington to conduct some other negotia- 
tions. The British government was at last suffering 
from conviction of sin, and disposed to show forth 
works meet for repentance. This change of heart 
had been wrought far less by diplomacy than by the 
logic of European events. In July, 1870, the 
Franco -Prussian War broke out, and no man could 
tell how soon England might be involved in the 
turmoil. In these anxious days she found herself 
fronted by the precedents which she had so recently 
established during the war in America. The 
thought was intolerable that, if Eugland were drawn 
into the war, the ports of a neutral would be open, 

x In private correspondence, however, Fish was already 
sharply critical. June 2:5, 1870, he wrote to a friend : "Clay 
and Benton each domineered in their day, but they were men 
capable of position; the aspirant to their control, in the present 
day, knows nothing but books, and not overmuch of them." 
C. F. Adams, The Treaty of Washington, p. 248. 



THE TEEATY OF WASHINGTON 355 

without possible protest, for the outfitting of ships 
of war to prey upou her commerce on every sea. 
Fish and the British government were coming closer 
together, and the Secretary of State, who had 
hitherto remained reluctantly at his post out of loy- 
alty to his friend, the President, now came to cher- 
ish an honorable ambition that he might bring this 
long-standing controversy to a successful issue. In 
September, 1870, he wrote to a friend : " If England 
can be brought to think so [that she was drawn into 
errors], it will not be necessary for her to say so, — 
at least, not to say it very loudly. It may be said 
by a definition of what shall be Maritime Interna- 
tional Law in the future, and a few kind words. 
She will want in the future what we have claimed. 
Thus she will be benefited — we satisfied." 1 

The Secretary repeatedly suggested to the British 
minister a comprehensive settlement, a feature of 
which should be the cession of Canada, but on the 
very day that the allies surrounded Paris came the 
reply that although England would gladly be rid of 
the Colonies, it was impossible for her to force in- 
dependence upon them, or even to refer the ques- 
tion of independence to a popular vote of the people 
of the Dominion. But England's predicament did 
not pass unnoticed by her Continental neighbors : 
the Eussian minister came to Fish with the sugges- 
tion that the Franco- Prussian War was affording a 
most opportune time for pressing our claims for im- 
mediate settlement, and Fish diplomatically allowed 
l C. F. Adams, The Treaty of Washington, p. 126. 



356 CHARLES SUMNER 

the substance of this interview to become known to 
the British minister, who thereupon bluntly asked 
him what the United States wanted. Fish had be- 
come convinced that the unwillingness of the Cana- 
dians to separate from England stood as an insuper- 
able barrier to the oft-discussed plan of annexation. 
" Like the wise diplomat he was, he then dropped 
the unattainable from the discussion and on No- 
vember 20, 1870, asked merely an expression of re- 
gret on the part of Great Britain, an acceptable 
declaration of principles of international law and 
payment of claims." l 

Though these terms were much more moderate 
than the vague intimations heretofore given, Fish 
was resolved upon their prompt acceptance, and it 
was at bis instigation that in the President's mes- 
sage there were inserted those vigorous paragraphs 
relating to our claims, which set London fuming 
over the implied menace. But the British govern- 
ment, through Sir John Rose, promptly intimated a 
disposition to negotiate on the proposed basis, and 
early in January this trusted envoy in friendly 
converse at Fish's table was discussing preliminaries 
which led to the Treaty of Washington. 

The President, however, was adhering pertina- 
ciously to his favorite plan ; and if he gave Fish a 
free hand in dealing with England, it was appar- 
ently upon tacit pledge of his support in regard to 
San Domingo. In this same message, dated De- 
cember 5, 1870, Grant pictured in most fanciful 
1 Rhodes, Vol. VI, p. 355. 



THE TKEATY OF WASHINGTON 357 

and glowing colors the advantages of annexing the 
island, which, though then having a population of 
only about 120,000, he declared u capable of sup- 
porting 10,000,000 people in luxury." He argued 
that its acquisition would open a wide market for 
our products, and expressed the conviction that 
if the step were not taken, a free port would 
speedily be negotiated for by European nations 
in the Bay of Samana ; he urged Congress to au- 
thorize the appointment of a commission to nego- 
tiate a treaty by which the "great prize" might 
be secured. This was recognized to be impos- 
sible, but a friend of the President did offer a 
resolution for the appointment of a commission of 
investigation. 

Then was the time for silence or for the soft an- 
swer on the part of Sumner. It was morally certain 
that Congress would grant nothing more than a 
commission of inquiry. But in Sumner's opinion 
the authorizing of such a commission would involve 
approval of grievous violations of international law 
and threat of injury to the race of which he had 
constituted himself the champion. Moreover, he 
had been singled out for attack because he had done 
what he conceived to be his duty : he had been 
struck at in the person of his friend, Motley, who 
had just been summarily removed from the English 
mission, 1 and the plan had already been broached 

1 Motley had greatly exasperated both Grant and Fish by the 
paper, "The End of the Mission," which he had sent to the 
State Department. 



358 CHARLES SUMNER 

of reconstituting the Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions so as to secure its favor for the San Domingo 
scheme. The antagonism between Grant and Sum- 
ner had reached the point where neither could be- 
lieve any good of the other. Their temperaments 
and training were so different that from the be- 
ginning they had appreciated little of each other's 
excellencies. 1 As Sumner grew older he became 
more oracular and intolerant of opposition, and the 
extravagant value which he always attached to liter- 

1 "Sumner demanded, as the prerequisite of agreeable per- 
sonal intercourse, adulation, expressed or tacit ; Grant had by 
1870 become accustomed to receive it, but had not, nor ever 
would have, the power to give it." (W. A. Dunning, Recon- 
struction, Political and Economic, p. 165.) The widening breach 
between these two most influential men in public life was 
viewed with regret and grave apprehension as to its conse- 
quences. Gerrit Smith, as the loyal friend of both men, was 
induced to come to Washington for the express purpose of try- 
ing to bring them together. He did his best, but had to ac- 
knowledge to Andrew D. White, at whose instance he had made 
the effort: ''It is impossible ; it is a breach which can never 
be healed." (Autobiography of Andrew D. White, Vol. I, p. 
485.) Grant, the man of action, seems to have distrusted Sum- 
ner as a man of words. Once asked if he had heard Sumner 
converse, he replied, '"No, but I have heard him lecture." It 
is said that upon hearing some one remark, " Mr. Sumner does 
not believe in the Bible," Grant commented; "No, I suppose 
not; lie didn't write it." (G. S. Boutwell, Sixty Years of Pub- 
lic Lifr, Vol. II, pp. 215, 251.) Nevertheless, there is evidence 
that Grant recognized Sumner's power, and that he tried to 
keep on friendly terms with him. Years later, in 1878, James 
Russell Lowell met Grant in Spain, and one of the things 
which most impressed him was this: "He seemed anxious 
to explain to me his quarrel with Sumner — or Sumner's 
with him. * Sumner is the only man I was ever anything 
but my real self to ; the only man I ever tried to conciliate 
by artificial means' — those are his very words." (Letters, Vol. 
II, p. 233.) 



THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON 359 

ary and oratorical achievements led him to regard 
with something of disdain as well as distrust the 
taciturn soldier whom he thought now sadly out of 
place in the President's chair. Tale-bearers, espe- 
cially those of Grant's quasi -mi lit ary household, had 
done much to widen the breach between the two. 
Sumner was even credulous enough to assert his 
belief that his life had been threatened at the White 
House, a statement which Morton warned him not 
to repeat, unless he wanted to be laughed at. Judge 
E. Rock wood Hoar, one of Sumner's closest friends, 
tells of visits to the senator, who would accompany 
him to the door, and there, as he grew more excited, 
would shout out denunciations of the occupant of 
the White House, just across Lafayette Square, his 
A T oice rising till he " roared like a bull of Bashan," 
so that " it would at times seem as if all Washing- 
ton, including Mrs. Grant, must hear and the police 
would have to interfere." And this feeling was 
warmly reciprocated. George F. Hoar was walking 
along the street in earnest conversation with the 
President upon official business when suddenly 
Grant, catching sight of Sumner's windows, broke 
out with: "That man who lives up there has 
abused me in a way I never suffered from any other 
man living ! " and he shook his clenched fist at the 
senator's house. 

Under such circumstances, perhaps it was not in 
human nature to pass over the President's proposals 
in silence. Certainly that was not Sumner's course. 
When the resolution for the commission of inquiry 



360 CHARLES SUMNER 

came before the Senate, heedless of earnest dissua- 
sion of friends, he took the floor, and in a scathing 
speech— which he later made the more exasperating 
by the title, " Naboth's Vineyard,"— he denounced 
the whole San Domingo scheme. 1 Its key-note was 
sounded in the opening sentence : " The resolution 
commits Congress to a dance of blood!" In con- 
trast with his earlier discussion of the matter, he 
now laid chief stress upon the illegal use of the 
American navy in upholding Baez, and the mena- 
cing of Hayti both by our war-ships and by the tone 
of the President's message. He i^ointed out an 
analogy between the President's rumored intention 
of interfering with the Committee on Foreign Rela- 
tions and Buchanan's insistence that Douglas be 
removed from the Committee on Territories, in 
order that that committee's support might be se- 
cured for the Lecompton Constitution. His speech, 
in which burned again all the fire of youth, ac 
complished nothing but increased bitterness. One 
of his greatest admirers, George William Curtis, 
who believed that Sumner's points were well taken, 
nevertheless deplored his having "criticized the 
administration as a relentless enemy and not as a 
friend" at the very time when it was "of the ut- 
most importance to criticize without weakening it." 
The resolution, amended to the effect that it "should 
not be understood as committing Congress to the 
policy of annexing San Domingo," was passed by 
very large majorities, and the Senate promptly 
1 Dec. 21, 1870. Works, Vol. XIV, pp. 89-131. 



THE TKEATY OP WASHINGTON 361 

confirmed the appointment of B. F. Wade, S. G. 
Howe, and A. D. White. 1 

The day following his speech, Sumner dined at 
the house of Secretary Fish with Senator Morton, 
who had been the chief advocate of the annexation 
of San Domingo, and Sumner's outspoken opposi- 
tion seemed not to have chilled their friendly rela- 
tions. Nevertheless, only seven days later (during 
which no new occasion of difference had arisen) 
Hamilton Fish placed on record in an official docu- 
ment a most damaging reflection upon the integrity 
of the man who for twenty years had been one of 
his most intimate friends. On January 9th, in re- 
sponse to a request from the Senate, the President 
sent to that body the papers relating to the removal 
of Motley. Among them was a letter, dated De- 
cember 30th, to the secretary of the legation at 
London, in which Fish spoke of Grant as one " than 
whom no man ... is more sensitive to a be- 
trayal of confidence, or would look with more scorn 
and contempt upon one who uses the words of 
friendship to cover a secret and determined policy 
of hostility." No one for a moment doubted to 
whom reference was made. 

It is not to be denied that in recent months Sum- 
ner had proved hard to get on with, but how Fish 

1 Agassi z declined a place npon this commission becanse of 
bis friendship for Sumner. No such delicacy deterred Dr. 
Howe. Dissent over this San Domingo question caused an es- 
trangement between him and Sumner which was never to be 
removed. For the report of this commission and the close of 
the San Domingo controversy, see infra, p. 373. 



362 CHAELES SUMNER 

could have allowed a not unnatural irritation to 
betray him into so gross an injustice to a friend of 
many years is as incomprehensible as his later decla- 
ration that he was " not conscious of any just cause 
for the discontinuing of the relations which had 
existed between us !" ! At the time, however, he 
took a step which showed clearly that he believed 
their friendly relations had been brought to an end 
by his own act. The prompt sequel of the Presi- 
dent's message, with its "menacing" discussion of 
the Ajnerican grievances against England, was the 
reappearance in Washington of Sir John Eose, on 
January 9th, the very day the Motley papers were 
sent to the Senate, and his discussions with Fish 
soon reached a point which made it desirable to 
consult with the chairman of the Committee on 
Foreign Eelations. Instead of coming directly to 
see him, as had been his frequent custom, Fish, on 
January 12th, asked a member of the committee to 
find out for him on what terms he stood with the 
senator. Sumner told the intermediary that he 
should always be at the service of the Secretary for 
consultation on public business, but that he could 
not conceal his deep sense of personal wrong re- 
ceived from him, absolutely without excuse. 2 So 
an official interview took place, on January 15th, 
at which Fish showed Sumner Sir John Eose's con- 
fidential memorandum, prepared after cable com- 

1 Letter to Boston Transcript, Oct. 31, 1877. 

2 A few days later, at a dinner where both were guests. Sum- 
ner ignored Fish's presence. 



THE TKEATY OF WASHINGTON 3t>3 

munication with the Foreign Office. Sumner de- 
murred at expressing an opinion as to the answer 
which should be given. Fish reminded him that 
he had come officially to him as chairman of the 
Senate Committee on Foreign Eelations to ask him 
his opinion and advice, and that he was entitled to 
them, since he must give an answer. Sumner said 
that the matter required much reflection, but that 
he would let him know about it in a day or two. 
Accordingly, two days later, Fish received from 
Sumner a memorandum, the most significant part 
of which was as follows : l ll The greatest trouble, 
if not peril, being a constant source of anxiety and 
disturbance, is from Fenianism which is excited by 
the British flag in Canada. 2 Therefore the with- 
drawal of the British flag cannot be abandoned as a 
condition or preliminary of such a settlement as is 
now proposed. To make the settlement complete, 
the withdrawal should be from this hemisphere, in- 
cluding provinces and islands." 3 

It is not easy to understand Sumner's motive in 
framing this memorandum. He had long been iu 

1 The memorandum is printed in full in J. B. Moore's Inter- 
national Arbitrations, Vol. I, p. 525. 

2 Fenianism had not always seemed to Sumner so appalling. 
April 3, 1866, he wrote to the Duchess of Argyll : " Fenianism 
is to us only a noisy shadow, without reality. I never saw a 
Fenian." Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 276. 

3 This memorandum has been variously regarded. The au- 
thor of the monumental " Memoir " of Sumner barely mentions 
it, evidently not deeming it significant enough to quote. On 
the other hand, Mr. C. F. Adams, in his monograph, The Treaty 
of Washington, pp. 145-152, finds in it the key to much that 
followed. 



364 CHAELES SUMNER 

favor of the annexation of Canada, yet he had de- 
clared against accessions which would not come to 
the United States with the free assent of their pop- 
ulation, and he could not have failed to know that 
at that time the people of the Dominion were stren- 
uously opposed to the transfer of sovereignty which 
he here proposed as an indispensable " condition or 
preliminary " to the settlement of the pending 
controversy with England. The judgment of Mr. 
C. F. Adams, the most painstaking student of this 
chapter of American diplomatic history, is prob- 
ably the most logical : — that by stipulating a con- 
dition which he knew to be impossible of fulfilment, 
Sumner hoped to postpone the settlement until a 
time when Canadian compliance might be secured 
to a transfer to which the British government would 
have already gladly assented. 

Fish had probably scented opposition in his official 
interview with Sumner, for that very day he went 
to Morton, the leading champion of the administra- 
tion's San Domingo policy, and asked him whether 
he thought a treaty along the lines proposed could 
secure ratification in case of Sumner's hostility, to 
which Morton answered, yes. Fish then sought out 
other leaders, Republican and Democratic, and re- 
ceived assurances of their support in the contingency 
suggested. A week after receiving Sumner's u opin- 
ion," Fish had a conference with Sir John Rose, 
showed him in confidence Sumner's " hemispheric 
flag-withdrawal memorandum," as Mr. Adams calls 
it, and assured him that the administration would 



THE TEEATY OF WASHINGTON 365 

use every endeavor " to secure a favorable result, 
even if it involved a conflict with the chairman of 
the Committee on Foreign Eelations in the Senate." l 
From this time events moved fast to a consummation. 
By the 1st of February the British minister informed 
Fish of the readiness of his government to submit the 
various matters of difference to a Joint High Com- 
mission, which should arrange a settlement by treaty. 
A week later the nominations of five members for the 
United States were sent to the Senate and promptly 
confirmed ; and on the 27th of February the Joint 
High Commission was organized in Washington. 

A heavy blow was now awaiting Sumner. In the 
debate which followed his speech on the San 
Domingo commission resolution, Conkling had de- 
clared that the Committee on Foreign Eelations 
" ought to be reorganized so that it should no longer 
be led by a virulent opponent of the administration," 
and in the interval before the beginning of the next 
session (March 4th) such a change came to be con- 
sidered probable. In the Eepublican Senate caucus 
a committee, the majority of which was supposed to 
be against the removal of Sumner, was appointed to 
bring in a committee list. Suspicion having been 
aroused, Allison and another man eager for party 
harmony, called upon the doubtful member of the 
committee and found him inexorably resolved to 
recommend Sumner's removal ; the only ground 
which he gave for his stand was that by the nature 
of his opposition to the San Domingo treaty the 
1 Moore, International Arbitrations, Vol. I, pp. 528-530. 



3GG CHARLES SUMNER 

senator had made himself offensive to the President. 
The committee, accordingly, named Cameron as 
chairman of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and 
transferred Sumner to the Committee on Privileges 
and Elections. When the report was presented in 
caucus, Sumner spoke of his twelve years of service 
upon his committee, and of the important questions 
with which it had had to deal, and called associates 
living and dead to testify if he had ever failed in 
any duty of labor or patriotism. He declined his 
new committee assignment and withdrew from the 
caucus. Debate followed, but the committee's list 
was sustained by a vote of twenty-six to twenty-one. 1 
In the Senate the motion for the adoption of this list 
gave rise to long and acrimonious debate. Sumner 
asked to be excused from the unwelcome duties as- 
signed him, and his request was granted. Against 
their will, the Republican majority were forced to 
give reasons for the proposed removal. The only 
ground alleged on the floor of the Senate was the 
fact that Sumner was not on speaking terms with the 
President and the Secretary of State, although his 
champions boldly asserted that this was but "a 
flimsy pretext " and that " the San Domingo scheme 
was at the bottom of the whole difficulty." 2 Even 
the very men who were urging Sumner' s removal 

1 Blaine, then Speaker of the House, severely condemned this 
action. " Never was the power of the caucus more wrongfully 
applied." He discusses it in detail : Twenty Years of Congress, 
Vol. II, pp. 503-506. 

! When as the ground for the proposed action it was alleged 
that Sumner had "refused to bold personal intercourse with the 
Secretary of State," Schurz, speaking for Sumner, declared that 



THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON 3G7 

paid glowiug tributes to his merits and past services, 
and declared that "under happier circumstances " 

lie could fill that chairmanship better thau an 3- other 
senator. Trumbull earnestly opposed the removal, 
saying that such a change was extraordinary and that 
according to established usages of the body, chairmen 
"were not changed contrary to their expressed 
wishes." Though bowing to the will of the majority, 
Sherman declared : * ' I regard this change as unj usti- 
fiable, as impolitic, as unnecessary, and ... no 
reason has been given which ought to weigh, in my 
j udgment, to induce the change. ' ' But no protest was 
of any avail ; the removal was carried, only the votes 
of nine Democrats being recorded against it. 1 Per- 
haps the least favorable light is thrown on this transac- 
tion by the choice of Cameron as Sumner's successor. 1 ' 
There can be no doubt that Grant's resentment 



Sumner had not refused to enter into any official relations, 
either with the President or with the Secretary of State, but 
had said that he would ''receive Mr. Fish as an old friend, and 
would not only be willing but would be glad to transact such 
matters and discuss such questions as might come up for con- 
sideration." And Sumner added: " In his own house.''' 
Blaine, Vol. II, p. 504. Two other grounds, alleged years later 
in the mass of controversy to which this action gave rise, viz., 
default in reporting treaties referred to his committee, and 
failure to ' ' move forward treaties " in the Senate, may be dis- 
missed as wholly unsustained by the evidence. To a third, at- 
tention is directed below, p. 368. 

1 See also John Sherman's Recollections, Vol. I, pp. 470-473. 

* " The real motive of the removal was shown past all ques- 
tion, when to this place of highest dignity and importance there 
was appointed a man whose long public record was a story only 
of intrigue and suspected corruption, and whose sole recom- 
mendation lay in being a servile partisan of the President." — 
G. S. Merriara, Life and Times of Samuel Bowles, Vol. II, p. 131. 



368 CHARLES SUMMER 

found a vindictive satisfaction in this deposition of 
Sumner from the position which was his pride and 
glory. Yet it would be an injustice to Fish not to 
consider the strongest argument which has been ad- 
vanced in justification of the pressure exerted by the 
administration to secure Sumner's removal. The 
Secretary, as we have stated, had given pledge to 
the representative of the British government that no 
pains would be spared to secure a settlement upon 
terms which had in general been accepted as the 
basis for agreement, " even if it involved a conflict 
with the chairman of the Committee on Foreign 
Relations," and in consequence the Joint High 
Commission was already in session. Yet Sumner 
had proposed " hemispheric flag-withdrawal" as an 
indispensable " preliminary " to any complete set- 
tlement. It is absurd to take the ground that Sum- 
ner was here speaking figuratively or expressing 
merely an aspiration, with a view to testing public 
sentiment. Charles Sumner gave this answer to the 
Secretary of State, with whom he was hardly on 
speaking terms, and who in official capacity had 
asked of him, also in official capacity, his opinion 
and advice. Sumner had requested time to deliber- 
ate, and after two days had sent this answer in writ- 
ing. It is highly significant, also, that this me- 
morial was almost in the precise language which Sum- 
ner had used eighteen months before in an elaborate 
communication to Motley, giving his forecast of the 
terms upon which the settlement might take place. 1 
1 Letter of June 15, 18G9. Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 410. 



THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON 369 

This ominous reply had been communicated to 
the British eiivoy and to a number of senators. 
They were warranted in believing that Sumner 
meant precisely what he said, and that in com- 
mittee and in the Senate he would prove an un- 
yielding obstructionist to the settlement which the 
administration had pledged itself to promote. It is 
a legitimate question whether the Senate precedent 
which Trumbull said required that no committee 
chairman should be changed contrary to his ex- 
pressed wish, was not seriously out of accord with 
any tenable theory of party responsibility, and 
whether the experience of the past forty years has 
not offered repeated instances where the good of the 
party and of the country as well would have been 
furthered by changes in the chairmanships contrary 
to the wishes of the incumbents. Because of the 
Senate's share in treaty-making, the accord between 
the administration and the chairman of the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Relations becomes a matter of 
unique importance. Often it lies in the power of 
that one man to make or mar its whole foreign 
policy. It was the full consciousness of this fact 
which had called from Fish that pathetically deferen- 
tial letter to Sumner before assuming his post in the 
cabinet. Sumner just at this time had been show- 
ing his unrelenting power of obstruction in the case 
of treaties which the administration had earnestly 
sought to secure. Far greater issues were now at 
stake. Fish saw within his grasp an honorable set- 
tlement of the grievances which for many years had 



370 CHARLES SUMNER 

kept alive rancor and ill-will between the two 
branches of the English-speaking race, provided the 
result of his negotiations could be put before the 
Senate in such a way as to command the normal 
party support. In the view of one of the keenest Eng- 
lish publicists, " Fish was mortally afraid of Sum- 
ner." 1 If Fish believed that Sumner, as chairman 
of the Committee on Foreign Relations, would seri- 
ously menace or delay the final ratification of the 
treaty which now bade fair to become the fulfilment 
of hopes long deferred, in the opinion of the present 
writer he was not only justified in exerting pressure 
to procure his removal, but failure to do so would 
have shown a lack of good faith as to the pledge he 
had given the British government and not less a 
lack of appreciation of the responsibility which 
rested upou him as the diplomatic representative of 
the United States to secure for his country peace 
with honor. 

Sumner's removal was a step that was deeply to 
be deplored. For twelve years he had served his 
country well. In distinguished qualifications for the 
high station he occupied, he was without a peer 
among men in public life — except in the peculiar 
conditions which had now arisen. That he was no 
longer on speaking terms with the President and 
the Secretary of State— a point unduly emphasized 
in the debates, since diplomatic reserve while the 
Joint High Commission was in session required 
that the weightier reason be kept out of sight — was 

1 John Morley, Life of Gladstone, Vol. II, p. 402. 



THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON 371 

far less to his discredit than to that of Grant and of 
Fish. So far forth, Sumner merits sympathy in 
this misfortune which was to shadow and embitter 
the few remaining years of his life. But by his ut- 
terly impracticable insistence upon "hemispheric 
flag- withdrawal,' 7 by his long record of pertinacious 
obstruction in the Senate, and by his growing in- 
firmities of temper, in large measure, Sumner drew 
this misfortune upon himself. 1 

1 This removal of Sumner from the chairmanship has occa- 
sioned a vast deal of controversy. The views above expressed 
accord in the main with the conclusions of Mr. Charles Francis 
Adams, whose Treaty of Washington is the most comprehensive 
study of the issues involved. E. L. Godkin discussed the 
matter in a fair-minded editorial, N. Y. Nation, March 16, 
1871. In his Memoir of Sumner, Mr. E. L. Pierce gives 
an inordinate amount of space to this affair. He bitterly 
arraigus Grant and Fish for their persecution of Sumner, 
barely refers to his celebrated " Memorandum," and seems 
to me altogether to underestimate the menace of Sumner s 
probable opposition to the pending negotiations. Mr. J. F. 
Rhodes attaches nearly as much importance as does Mr. 
Adams to Sumner's mistakes in his Johnson-Clarendon speech 
and in his "Memorandum," yet declares that Grant's insistence 
on Sumner's deposition " must go down in histor}' unjustified," 
and attributes it to " pure vindictiveness," adding, " If it was 
done as a matter of policy or supposed necessity, the policy was 
mistaken and the necessity unreal," — a judgment which seems 
to me unwarranted. J. C. K. Davis, in "Mr. Fish and the 
Alabama Claims," presents much special pleading in behalf of 
Fish ; some of his points are demolished by Pierce's criticism. 
The most successful championship of Sumner's cause has come 
from ex-Governor D. H. Chamberlain, whose paper, "Charles 
Sumner and the Treaty of Washington," should be read as a 
critique of Mr. Adams's monograph. He insists that in his 
" Memorandum " Sumner had no reason to suppose he was tak- 
ing ground which had been abandoned by Grant and Fish ;that 
if this " Memorandum " had been considered of much impor- 
tance, it would have been brought into the Senate debates; that 
at the time of his removal, he had given no sign of au intention 



372 CHAKLES SUMKER 

During the three mouths preceding his deposi- 
tion, documents seut to the Senate upon Sumner's 
call had revealed more clearly the methods and 
incidents involved in the negotiation of the San 
Domingo aunexatiou treaties, and, against the 
earnest advice of his friends, Sumner resolved to 
bring these matters to the attention of the Senate. 
With some difficulty he secured the floor for the 
24th of March. On the appointed day, long before 
the session was to open, thousands strove to secure 
entrance to the thronged Senate galleries ; the 
House adjourned and its members and representa- 
tives of the diplomatic corps crowded the aisles of 
the Senate chamber, so keen was the interest in the 
anticipated onslaught of Sumner upon the adminis- 
tration from whom, as many believed, he had suf- 
fered grievous injustice. It was the very day upon 
which the San Domingo commissioners were ex- 
pected to reach Washington, fresh from their field 
of investigation ; but Sumner considered their re- 
port a foregone conclusion, and immaterial to the 
matters he had on his mind. For three and a half 

to obstruct the progress of negotiations for a treaty which were 
then under full headway. He ridicules the idea that Sumner's 
influence could have defeated the treaty, and on various other 
points "takes the negative " with great spirit. Sumner's own 
account of this unfortunate controversy is to be found in an 
elaborate " Statement " as to his personal relations with the 
President and Secretary of State. This was prepared for pres- 
entation in the Senate in March, 1871, but Sumner decided to 
withhold it. Accordingly, though printed and distributed 
privately, it was not published till after Sumner's death, when 
F. W. Bird sent it to the New York Tribune, in which it ap- 
peared April 6, 1874. — Works, Vol. XIV, pp. 254-276. 



THE TEEATY OF WASHINGTON 373 

hours he spoke with great solemnity and without 
persoual bitterness. He did not concern himself 
with the expediency of annexation, but brought de- 
tailed evidence from official documents to uphold 
his assertions that the force of the American navy 
had been made to serve as the sole support of Baez 
and as a menace to Hayti. His auditors were sur- 
prised that Sumner did not refer to his removal 
from his committee nor make mention of current 
charges against the President on the score of nepo- 
tism and gift-taking. In one passage it was thought 
that he allowed resentment to induce him to bring 
unjust imputations against Grant : — in a compari- 
son between the President's use of the war vessels 
and the Ku Klux outrages, with the implication 
that a proper use of energies abused in the annexa- 
tion enterprise might have prevented or have put a 
speedy stop to Southern outbreaks. This passage 
was an ill-considered and unworthy afterthought, 
regretted by his friends. Somewhat lame defense of 
the President's acts was attempted by a few of his 
adherents, but Schurz strongly upheld Sumner's 
charges as to the illegal use of naval power. 

Ten days later, the President transmitted to Con- 
gress the report of the commission of inquiry. It 
was in general favorable to annexation, though 
without recommendation. 1 Since it had become 
certain that the votes necessary for annexation by 

1 "Senator Wade was favorable to annexation on account of 
his ' manifest destiny ' ideas. Dr. Howe was in favor of it in 
view of various philanthropic considerations. Neither of these 
views affected my opinion, but I was influenced later, some- 



374 CHARLES SUMNER 

treaty or by joint resolution could not be secured, 
here ended the President's dream of adding to the 
United States a new commonwealth in the Indies. 
The history of the San Dominican k k republic ' ' during 
the past forty years has shown little basis for the 
vision which captivated Grant's imagination. 1 

what, by the view taken by President Grant in a conversation 
after the matter was virtually settled, to the effect that, in caee 
of anything approaching a racial war between the white people 
of the South and the freedmen, Santo Domingo might be useful 
as giving the blacks such an opportunity for colonization that 
they could make terms with the ruling race, who might be more 
favorably inclined to a compromise on seeing that they might 
be largely deprived of their best laborers, should the latter have 
an opportunity to emigrate to a semi-tropical country under the 
American flag." Of the commissioners two favored a report 
advocating annexation ; Mr. White, however, prevailed upon 
them to accept his view that, as Congress had asked only for 
facts, advice from the commission would under the circum- 
stances be an impertinence. {Autobiography of Andrew D. 
White, Vol. I. p. 506.) In a letter to the writer (March 11, 
1909), Mr. White states his personal attitude on the question of 
annexation. "My feeling regarding any annexation was one 
of doubt, — of suspended judgment. I was by no means anx- 
ious to try the experiment, but felt that if there was an Ameri- 
can majority in favor of trying it, the Spanish part of Santo 
Domingo, under the circumstances, afforded the best oppor- 
tunity to do so safely, since it was very sparsely populated and 
all its leaders of opinion favorable to coming under the swaj' of 
the United States." 

1 Grant never escaped from the glamour of this San Domingo 
project. On almost the last page of his Personal Memoirs he 
recurs to it, saying that he was chiefly led to urge annexation 
with a view to the settlement of the race question in the United 
States (Memoirs, Vol. II, p. 393). He adds : "San Domingo was 
freely offered to us not only by the administration but by all the 
people, almost without price. * The island is upon our shores, ia 
very fertile, and is capable of supporting fifteen millions of 
people." Dr. Howe's forecast was even more glowing: "In 
no case can the cost to the United States exceed $1,500,000. 
But were it a hundred millions, it would be cheaper than Alaska 



THE TEEATY OF WASHINGTON 375 

One of the most painful features of Sumner's re- 
moval from his chairmanship was that it put out of 
a position of high influence the one man in the Sen- 
ate best fitted by education and culture, by knowl- 
edge of European and particularly of English poli- 



at a hundred cents. [The price paid to Russia for Alaska was 
$7,200,000. In the year 1907, Alaska's output of gold alone 
amounted to $18,489,400 or more than two and one-half times the 
total cost of Alaska.] Cheaper than Alaska? Why, .Santo Do- 
mingo is w r orth more to us than even Cuba would be. Less 
extensive, it is more fertile, more salubrious, richer in agri- 
cultural and mineral resources, and more felicitous in geo- 
graphical position." 

The anticipations of neither party to this old controversy 
have been fulfilled. No European power, after our "folly in 
rejecting so great a prize," made haste to acquire it, or even to 
secure a free port on the Bay of Samana. Its population, then 
estimated by the Ecclesiastical Court at 207,000, and by the 
commission at not more than 150,000, had reached only about 
416,000, in 1907. Its government continued turbulent, and 
bankruptcy and repudiation seemed about to lead to interven- 
tion of European powers when, by the convention relating to 
Dominican finances, ratified in March, 1907, a citizen of the 
United States was made Receiver General of Customs, charged 
with the responsibility of apportioning a fixed proportion of 
the revenues among foreign creditors. 

Hayti retained the unmenaced independence which Sumner 
was eager to assure her. She has paid the interest on her bonds 
and kept out of serious quarrels with foreign powers, but she 
has shown little capacity for self-government. If Hayti's ex- 
hibition of what the negro race can do, when left to work out 
its own governmental salvation, is to be accepted as representa- 
tive, it falls far short of fulfilling Sumner's dream. Hayti has 
never known a president who was anything else than a dictator ; 
her revolutions are numbered bj the dozen. As late as Decem- 
ber, 1908, one dictator was deposed by another, with a ragged 
army at his heels, and rioting and pillage and bloodshed fol- 
lowed. Yet there is a gleam of hope in the despatch from the 
American minister to Hayti: "The revolution was one of the 
most orderly that has occurred iu Hayti for many years." — 
Outlook, Dec. 12, 1908, p. 804. 



376 CHARLES SUMNER 

tics and public men, and by study of international 
law to work congenially with the Joint High Com- 
mission in negotiating a treaty of first importance 
with Great Britain. Two of the British commis- 
sioners presented letters of introduction to Sumner. 
Though brought into no official relations, both policy 
and congeniality led the commission to make much of 
him. He was often consulted by its members ; the 
British minister dined them with Sumner as the only 
ol her guest ; upon their intimation that such an invi- 
tation would be acceptable, Sumner entertained the 
commissioners and their wives at an elaborate ban- 
quet j and the following night the men returned 
to dine with Sumner, their deliberations lasting into 
the small hours. Judge Hoar came to him fre- 
quently for conference, and when the treaty was 
finally signed, on May 8th, brought to Sumner's 
house the first available copy, inscribed : " The re- 
sult of long and earnest labor is presented and dedi- 
cated with respect and confidence by his friend, 
E. R. Hoar. 7 ' 

Much curiosity and some apprehension were felt 
as to the attitude which Sumner would take toward 
the treaty, for he declined to commit himself, until 
lie spoke in the Senate. Though no longer in his 
former position of authority, he could nevertheless 
exercise great powers of obstruction and opposition 
in that body. It was by no means certain that he 
could not at least force amendments which would 
make the treaty unsatisfactory to the British gov- 
ernment ; and, if he chose to attempt to arouse 



THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON 377 

X3ublic sentiment, it was believed that lie might 
work upon Fenianism — to which he had himself 
already given great prominence, in his " Memoran- 
dum," as a force to be reckoned with — so strongly as 
to bring enough outside pressure to bear upon sena- 
tors to defeat the treaty's ratification. The British 
commissioners stayed in Washington for some time 
after the signing of the treaty, frankly avowing to 
the home government that they deemed it best to 
remain where they could be in touch with certain 
influential leaders of the Senate. They were assidu- 
ous iu attentions to Sumner, and in acknowledg- 
ments of his assistance and courtesies. Sir Stafford 
Northcote declared: "We have paid him a good 
deal of attention since he has been deposed, and I 
think he is much pleased at being still recognized as 
a power. 1 ' J Sumner confided to Lieber : " Lord de 
Grey told me that without my speech [on the John- 
son-Clarendon Convention] the treaty could not have 
been made and that he worked by it as by a chart." 
To the great relief of the administration, Sumner 
not only gave to the treaty his vote, but made the 
principal speech in its exposition and support. To 
his friends he declared that every point he had 
urged against the earlier convention was met by this 
treaty. 2 It did not make our cause "a mere bundle 

1 Long, Norihcote, Vol. II, p. 23. 

2 "An examination of its provisions, in relation to the 
Alabama question, will show that they substantially meet the 
requirements of his [Sumner's] speech on the Johnson-Claren- 
don Convention." — J. B. Moore, International Arbitrations, 
Vol. I, p. 553. 



378 CHARLES SUMNER 

of individual claims," but comprehended "all com- 
plaints and claims" ; it did not allow any choice 
of arbitrator by lot; it expressed u in a friendly 
spirit the regret felt by Her Majesty's government " 
for the escape of the cruisers and the damage they 
wrought ; it declared as binding both in the pend- 
ing case and for the future such "due diligence" 
as would require a neutral power to " prevent the 
fitting out or assisting of belligerent vessels in its 
ports, and to prevent its ports being made a base of 
naval operations by one belligerent against the 
other." The determination of the amount of com- 
pensation was assigned to an arbitration conference 
which met at Geneva, where at first the more vigor- 
ous than ingenuous insistence upon Sumner's favor- 
ite idea of "national claims"— claims which Fish 
declared unfounded, an opinion supported by the 
weight of more recent authorities,— came near 
wrecking the whole negotiation. 1 Snmner criti- 
cized the vagueness of the language in the treaty 
which led to this later controversy, and he certainly 
would not have given his assent to an abandonment 
of the "national claims," had he supposed the 
treaty's provisions could be interpreted as sanction- 
ing such a course. He also suggested, but did not 
strongly urge, certain amendments, mainly with the 

1 "Tlie real fact, however, would seem to lie that the indirect 
claims were inserted in the American 'case' by those who pre- 
pared it, not because of any faith in them or hope that the\ 
might possibly be entertained, but in order to pet rid of them, 
and as a species of political estoppel." — C. F. Adams, Jr., Life 
of Charles Francis Adams, p. 388. 



THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON 379 

intent of seeming - more precise definition of the du- 
ties of neutrals and an extension of the immunity 
of private property at sea. Although he had de- 
elared the withdrawal of the British flag from the 
Western hemisphere to be an indispensable pre- 
liminary to a coniplete settlement, he advanced uo 
such impracticable suggestion in the Senate. He 
cheerfully accepted the treaty as the best that could 
be gained, aud declared that as such it would be 
"hailed with joy by the thinking men of Great 
Britain and of the United States." * 

For the sake of clearness, the narrative of the 
diplomatic negotiations of Grant's first term, in 
which Sumner was so vitally interested, has been 
Continued to this point without interruption. But 
during these four years Sumner had entered into the 
general work of the Senate with great vigor. He 
became a careful student of financial problems, and 
frequently took part in the debates, especially in 
protest against what he considered an attack upon 
the national credit ; he continued to urge the speedy 
resumption of specie payments and the funding of 

1 Wise after the fact, it is easy for the historian of to-day, in 
view of Sumner's magnanimous acceptance of the commission's 
treaty, to declare that his removal from his chairmanship was 
neither politic nor necessary. But Fish had to act upon the 
light then at his command. As Mr. Morley says, Sumner was 
then believed to be " red-hot against England " ; he was display- 
ing implacable antagonism to the President ; his "Memorandum " 
had laid down an impossible "preliminary'" ; and in twenty 
years no other man in the Senate had shown such pertinacity in 
obstruction, even in the face of almost unanimous opposition. 
Fish certainly had ample ground for seeing in Sumner a serious 
menace to the treaty. 



380 CHAELES SUMNER 

the public debt into long-term obligations ; he 
favored the simplification of the internal revenue 
system and the abolition of the income tax. He 
devoted much energy to securing a pension for Mrs. 
Lincoln, succeeding only after it had been held over 
from, one Congress to another, and finally carrying 
it against the unanimously adverse report of the 
committee to which it had been referred. Postal 
reform aroused his interest j he earnestly believed 
in making the postal system serve as a great educa- 
tional force for disseminating knowledge, and di- 
rected much effort to the attempt to secure lower 
rates and simpler classifications. 

But the legislation appealing most strongly to 
him was that which related to reconstruction. At 
the beginning of Grant's administration, three states 
still remained outside the pale, and Georgia, after 
being admitted to representation, presently pro- 
ceeded to "purge" her legislature in flagrant viola- 
tion of the Reconstruction Acts. Sumner cooper- 
ated heartily with other Republican leaders in 1870 
in the Act for reforming the legislature of Georgia, 
and in imposing a uniform set of " fundamental con- 
ditions" upon the admission of Virginia, Missis- 
sippi, and Texas. In replying to colleagues who 
denied the propriety of these prohibitions upon 
changes in state constitutions allowing exclusions 
from the suffrage, or from school privileges, or from 
office-holding, on account of race, color or previous 
condition of servitude, Sumner again exhibited his 
characteristic mode of constitutional interpretation. 



THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON 381 

He was much given to citing the Declaration of In- 
dependence, if not as directly conferring powers 
upon Congress, at any rate as an authoritative guide 
in the interpretation of the Constitution. Limita- 
tions upon the powers of Congress he was wont to 
brush contemptuously aside, when he thought they 
stood in the way of " human rights" of which he 
conceived himself the chief defender ; and men who, 
fearing this tendency toward centralization, opposed 
placing such powers in the hands of Congress, he 
would most unjustly but vehemently denounce as 
the lineal descendants of nullifiers and secessionists. 

In 1870, when some changes in the naturalization 
laws were under discussion, Sumner tried to secure 
the passage of an amendment striking out the word 
" white," so that there should be no distinctions of 
race and color in granting admission to citizenship. 
This amendment was defeated largely through the 
influence of senators from the Pacific coast, who 
were opposed to the extension of naturalization to 
the Chinese. Sumner had no fear of the " Yellow 
Peril." In his view, u a returned Chinaman is 
worth a dozen missionaries ; but while he is here, — 
if he does not return, — he comes under our influ- 
ences, he shares the good of our churches, of our 
schools, and if you will let him he will grow up in 
the glory and the beauty of our citizenship." The 
only change made at this time was an amendment, 
at Sumner's instigation, admitting to naturalization 
" aliens of African nativity or African descent." 

The wreck of Sumner's hopes of domestic hap- 



382 CHARLES SUMNER 

piuess and the strain of the prolonged controversy 
with the administration told heavily upon him. In 
February, 1871, he wrote, U I am weary and old, 



the same month, for the first time in a dozen years, 
he suffered from a return of the angina pectoris. 



and much disheartened by the course of our Presi 
dent, who is not the man we supposed." Later in 

Yet despite illness and depression, he fouud strength 
for some literary efforts and diversions. As a 
means of disseminating his views on civil rights, in 
1869 he wrote a learned disquisition on "Caste," 
which he put to rather inappropriate use as a 
Lyceum lecture, delivering it in eight states. In 
the following year he made a lecture tour from 
Massachusetts to Illinois, presenting sometimes his 
address on "Lafayette" but more frequently a lec- 
ture on the Franco -Prussian War, just ended ; in 
this he discussed its causes, denounced Louis Napo- 
leon, and emphasized anew his views on the enormi- 
ties of war. The preparation of a paper on "The 
Best Portraits in Engraving" gave him an oppor- 
tunity to follow his favorite penchant and to do some 
congenial work upon biographical sketches of emi- 
nent engravers. 

In 1871 it might seem that Sumner had become a 
man without a party. He had opposed certain 
favorite measures of the Republican administration, 
and had been deposed by Republican votes from his 
commanding position in the Senate. It was not 
known how he would align himself in the future. 
Nevertheless, the Republican leaders in Massachu- 



THE TREATY OF WASHINGTON 383 

setts found themselves obliged to appeal to him in 
the fall of this year as the one man whose influence 
was essential to save the commonwealth from the 
menace of General Butler's unprecedented cam- 
paign for the governorship. Sumner's personal re- 
lations with Butler had not been unpleasant and it 
was with reluctance that he consented to do what 
was laid upon him as a duty : he joined with Wilson 
in a declaration that Butler's nomination would be 
' l hostile to the best interests of the commonwealth 
and of the Republican party. ' ' This act was thought 
to be the turning-point in the campaign. If it lost 
Butler the nomination, it certainly won for Sumner 
a bitter and vindictive enemy. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

SUMNER'S PERSONALITY AND CHARACTERISTICS 

For nearly a score of years Charles Sumner was 
the most conspicuous figure in the Senate of the 
United States. In body as well as in mind he tow- 
ered among his colleagues. In manhood, Sumner's 
height was six feet and four inches, and he had the 
frame and strength of a giant. In his youth he 
swam across the Niagara River just below the Falls. 
His broad forehead was overhung by a great mass 
of brown hair. His eyes were of a deep blue, his 
nose strong and aquiline, his mouth large. In his 
college days his features seemed too heavy for his 
slight frame, but in his prime came greater fulness, 
which gave him a handsome, manly face and most 
commanding presence. 

There was always lacking in him a certain supple- 
ness both of body and of mind. He was a man of 
great erudition. Extraordinary as were his intel- 
lectual powers, they were not of the highest order : 
they were acquisitive rather than creative, — a con- 
trast which he himself seemed to draw in a remark 
to his friend, Colonel T. W. Higginson, in relation 
to some demand upon him which he thought excess- 
ive : "These people forget that I am a cistern, 
not a fountain, and require time to fill up." ' His 

1 Contemporaries, p. 283. 



SUMNER'S PERSONALITY 385 

phenomenal memory put the harvest of his years of 
study and experience at his instant command. The 
variety and fulness of his information often led the 
listener to misjudge him. Mrs. Jefferson Davis has 
given an interesting account of the impression Sum- 
ner made upon those who did not get below the sur- 
face in their knowledge of him : " He was a hand- 
some, unpleasing man, and an athlete whose physique 
proclaimed his physical strength. His conversation 
was studied but brilliant, his manner deferential 
only as a matter of policy ; consequently he never 
inspired the women to whom he was attentive with 
the pleasant consciousness of possessing his regard 
or esteem. He was, until his fracas with Mr. Brooks, 
fond of talking to Southern women, and prepared 
himself with great care for these conversational 
pyrotechnics, in which, as well as I remember, there 
was much Greek fire and the ' set pieces ' were nu- 
merous ; he never intruded his peculiar views upon 
us in any degree, but read up the Indian mutiny, 
lace, Demosthenes, jewels, Seneca's morals, intag- 
lios, the Platonian theory, and once gave me quite 
an interesting resume of the history of dancing." ' 
In his early thirties Sumner became one of the 
most sought-for lecturers upon the Lyceum platform, 
then worthily manned by the leaders of American 
thought. Here to his kingly presence was joined 
a voice remarkable for its fulness and strength, — 
" a splendid organ : the diapason was there in tones 
full and rich ; yet the vox humana was lacking." 

1 Memoirs of Jefferson Davis, Vol. I, pp. 557-558. 



386 CHAKLES SUMXEK 

His enunciation was distinct and his sentences "well- 
rounded. He allowed himself none of the collo- 
quialisms or clipping of words which brought a 
greater orator, Wendell Phillips, into more intimate 
touch with the average audience. * He was always 
' ' full of matter. ' ' His speeches grew to portentous 
length, not because he was rambling in thought or 
did not know how to come to a close, but because 
he was absorbed in his theme and because he delib- 
erately cultivated a florid, over-elaborated style. 
Thus, he would refer to the Fugitive Slave Act as 
"most cruel, unchristian, detestable, devilish, 
heaven-defying ; setting at naught the best principles 
of the Constitution and the laws of God." Though 
his popular lectures ran to two or three hours in 
length, he was intolerant of any interruption. If 
some unfortunate in a far corner of the audience, 
after listening to the speaker for two full hours, 
tried to steal from the hall, Sumner would stop 
short in his discourse, glower at the offender's every 
step, and even continue to glare for many heavy 
seconds at the door through which the wretched man 
had made his embarrassed exit. 

His earlier platform addresses and speeches were 
carefully wrought out and memorized, and then de- 
livered without notes and with much attention to 
gestures and manner. At times, however, he would 
forget himself in his theme and quite shake off the 

1 Personal recollections of Mr. E. Harlow Russell. For vig- 
orous descriptions of Sumner's oratory, see Independent, July 19, 
1859, by Theodore Tilton ; and N. Y. Tribune, Nov. 16, i859, 
by Mrs. Julia Ward Howe. 



SUMNER'S PERSONALITY 387 

conventions of the orator, as when in his Harvard 
Phi Beta Kappa address he stood with his back 
turned to the audience, while he was directing an 
impassioned appeal to President Quiney. But most 
of his speeches smelled of the lamp, and his denun- 
ciations were made all the more galling by the be- 
lief that the invective which he was much given to 
pouring upon his opponents sprang not from his 
tongue in the heat of passion but had been carefully 
worked up and committed to memory in the quiet 
solitude of his study. His speech for the expulsiou 
of Bright was described by one who heard it as " a 
lash of scorpions." Few men in so strenuous pub- 
lic service have found so much time or inclination 
to thumb dictionaries and books of synonyms. 
" Prophetic Voices concerning America" or u of 
America"? — this was the question upon which, 
after much anxious thought, he was consulting with 
the Librarian of Congress and writing to Longfellow, 
on the very last day of his life. He had a fondness 
for preambles, and for formal pronunciamentos of 
his views. He often showed a rare skill in the 
choice of the telling phrase, and in his " Freedom 
national, Slavery sectional," "The Crime against 
Kansas," " The Barbarism of Slavery" he forged 
weapons that were splendidly effective. ' ' Naboth's 
Vineyard," as the title of his speech on Grant's San 
Domingo policy, was perhaps more striking and of- 
fensive than anything in the arraignment itself. 
No charge is more unjust than that Sumner ever 
spoke as a mere rhetorician, yet it is a valid criti- 



388 CHAELES SUMNER 

cism that he was " too often the slave of words when 
he thought he was their master." l Thus he was 
led into an extravagance of expression at times quite 
at variance with a prosaic " unoratorical " view of 
the facts. As we have seen, at the beginning of his 
career, he could write to Winthrop with earnest 
protestations of personal friendship and regard, and 
three days later publish a scathing arraignment of 
that congressman's recent vote : "It cannot be for- 
gotten on earth ; it must be remembered in heaven. 
Blood ! blood ! is on the hands of the representa- 
tive from Boston. Not all great Neptune's ocean 
can wash them clean ! " Yet Sumner was surprised 
that Winthrop should see cause for declaring their 
personal relations at an end. In his Faneuil Hall 
speech he pictures the depths of infamy to which 
Fillmore had sunk in signing the Fugitive Slave 
Bill: "Better for him had he never been born ! 
Better for his name, and for the name of his children, 
had he never been President ! ' ' Yet this did not 
prevent his showing decided pleasure, a few months 
later, at "the peculiarly cordial reception ". which 
Fillmore gave him in Washington. 2 And again, to- 
ward the close of his life, in his first speeches on the 

1 John Morley thus characterizes him. Life of Gladstone, Vol. 
II, p. 398. 

2 Dr. Howe wrote to Sumner that on good authority it was 
reported that Fillmore, "in answer to a query ahout how you 
could seek his hospitalities after denouncing him so bitterly, 
said. 'Mr. Sumner seems to like me pretty well ; at any rate, by 
coming to my house he shows he did not believe what he 
said."' May 11, 1852, Journals and Letters of S. G. Howe, 
Vol. II, p. 374. 



SUMNER'S PERSONALITY 389 

San Doruiiigo treaties, although Sumner protested 
that he had spoken only in kindliness, his words 
seemed to Grant and to many others, so charged 
with imputations against the President as to place 
the speaker in the attitude of a bitter assailant of 
his motives and character. In these very years 
Sumner was being made the victim of a somewhat 
similar failure in discrimination to that which he 
was displaying. In 1872 the talented editor of 
Harper* 's Weekly found it necessary to rebuke Thomas 
Nast because he carried over into his caricatures of 
Sumner the brutal method which he had employed 
so effectively against Tweed. In like manner, 
Surnner's pen and tongue became so accustomed to 
denouncing slavery and 1 1 slave-mongers ' ' that they 
kept the same furious diction when condemning the 
more venial faults and failings of Johnson and 
Grant. In Sumner's later years this lack of self- 
restraint extended from his words to his manner, 
and at times friends noted with apprehension his 
flushed face, trembling voice, and seeming irrespon- 
sibility for the almost frenzied words he was uttering. 1 
Aside from this extravagance, there were other 
qualities in Sumner's addresses which provoked 
criticism. In his speeches upon the Fugitive Slave 
Law there was a frequent elaboration of references to 
slavery as the u harlot" or the " harpy," which 
gave great offense to Southern hearers. These pas- 
sages are not pleasant reading to-day ; but it must 

1 Comments by Fish and Dana, in The Treaty of Washington, 
pp. 173-176. 



390 CHARLES SUMNER 

be said that, in the face of the haughty arrogance 
of the Southern leaders, it was Sumner' s deliberate 
purpose to exhibit the defilement of contact with 
slavery, and his plainness, even grossness, of speech 
found justification in its occasion and effect. Sum- 
ner never appreciated the force and charm of brev- 
ity and simplicity ; his speeches in the Senate fre- 
quently exceeded three hours in length, and their 
embellishment with labored alliterations, and with 
poetical quotations, especially wheu chosen from 
the Greek and Latin, at times did more to amuse 
than to convince his hearers. For a writer who 
concerned himself so seriously with the form of his 
expression, Sumner was strangely lacking in sensi- 
tiveness to the demands of unity or appropriateness 
to the occasion. In many cases doubtless he vio- 
lated these demands deliberately. Delenda est Car- 
thago was hardly a more inevitable ending of Cato's 
speeches in the Roman Senate than was a denuncia- 
tion of slavery of every public utterance of the sena- 
tor from Massachusetts. It was with this message 
that his Lyceum lectures and even his obituary trib- 
utes were weighted. But only a faulty artistic 
sense could have allowed such lapses as the injec- 
tion of a long section from a ten-year-old lecture on 
u White Slavery in the Barbary States" into a 
Senate speech, or the devotion of a fourth of his 
Faneuil Hall eulogy of Lincoln to such irrelevant 
and controversial topics as an elaborate criticism of 
the Queen's proclamation regarding belligerency, 
and a detailed argument in favor of negro suffrage. 



SUMNER'S PERSONALITY 391 

In his later years, Sumner came to value most the 
printed page as the means Of spreading his in- 
fluence. Whether in the Senate or upon the plat- 
form, therefore, he became comparatively indifferent 
to his immediate hearers, for his thought was fixed 
upon the vast audience whom he could thus reach, 
and it was often through pressure from this outside 
audience that his colleagues were reluctantly brought 
to adopt his policies. It became one of his chief 
objects of solicitude to bring out a revised edition 
of his Works before his death. " These speeches," 
he said, "are my life. As a connected series they 
will illustrate the progress of the great battle with 
slavery, and what I have done in it." At the task 
of their revision and annotation he toiled year after 
year. To cite a single typical illustration of the 
elaborateness of this work, he devoted forty-eight 
pages of fine print to setting forth the comments in 
the press and from friends on his speech, " The Bar- 
barism of Slavery." At the time of his death he 
was engaged upon the tenth volume ; two more vol- 
umes were brought out under Longfellow's supervi- 
sion, and three others were edited by his literary 
executors. 

It must be confessed that Sumner's rhetoric has 
not stood the test of time. The very pains which 
he bestowed in elaboration served in a measure to 
defeat his object. But to acknowledge that Sum- 
ner's speeches do not hold the place which he hoped 
for them in world literature is not to deny that in 
their day and generation they were a tremendous 



392 CHARLES SUMNER 

power for good. Upon the lecture platform bis ideal- 
ism and eloquence captivated aspiring young men, 
and proved one of the most effective influences upon 
those who came to voting age in the decade before 
the Civil War. What gave Sumner's words their 
tremendous power was their " fervency of holy en- 
thusiastic conviction." Profound seriousness per- 
vaded his speeches, as it did Gladstone's ; each 
made upon his hearers the impression " that the 
matter he was discussing was that upon which the 
foundations of heaven and earth rest." ' He came 
to the Senate at a time when nearly every Northern 
leader with any considerable following was urging 
supine acquiescence in compromise. On the day 
when his clarion voice rang out in stern arraignment 
of the Fugitive Slave Act, men thanked God that at 
last a man was come whose courage matched his 
conscience. By that speech Sumner ushered in a 
new day. 

For years Sumner was one of the most unpopular 
men in the Senate. This was not due merely to the 
fact that the measures which he had most at heart 
found little favor with the majority of his col- 
leagues. Without any experience in the making or 
administering of laws, Sumner had stepped from 
the Lyceum platform into the most powerful of 
legislative bodies. He changed his forum, but not 
his manner. He had become so accustomed to 
swaying vast popular audiences that he expected 
his hearers to u accept with meekness the ingrafted 

1 G. F. Hoar, Autobiography, Vol. II, p. 347. 



SUMNER'S PERSONALITY 393 

word" j but this his colleagues were by uo means 
minded to do. One of his private secretaries 
clearly marks this trait : — "Mr. Sumner was a man 
not ready to yield to his equals. ' Domineering ' 
is a strong word ; but he felt a superiority which 
really existed, and his manner asserted it. To his 
subordinates no one could be more considerate, 
more generous." ! He was the champion of tbe 
freedmen and insisted that they must be accorded 
absolute civil equality. Among his own intimates 
he numbered mulatto caterers in Boston and in 
Washington, and these as well as many other peo- 
ple of most humble origin and opportunities were 
welcome in his parlor, and at his table, — a wel- 
come which it is said Mrs. Sumner found it very 
hard to extend. 

Yet Sumner would march roughshod over the 
feelings of others when they seemed to him to show 
a "caste" spirit. At times his manner was most 
unfortunate : he would speak with brutal frankness, 
far beyond what the occasion warranted, so that 
men who admired his character and ability and who 
prized his friendship, nevertheless hesitated to urge 
his election to certain associations of conservative 
and scholarly gentlemen, fearing that he would not 
" fit." Among his own colleagues, Sumner was crit- 
icized for his aristocratic manners, his airs of su- 
periority. He was reproved by Fessenden for " lec- 
turing the Senate." He nagged his associates with 
reminders of how they had at first derided and 
1 F. V. Balch, Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 343. 



394 CHARLES SUMNER 

then supported his measures. He laid down Lin- 
coln's duty in a way a man of less magnanimity 
would have resented. Of all his associates of 
nearly a quarter of a century there were hardly any 
but Chase, Schurz and Wilson, with whom his 
personal relations were not at some time severely 
strained. In every great measure to which he de- 
voted himself, he believed he saw clearly some high 
moral issue. Says Curtis : "I was one day talking 
with him upon some public question, aud as our 
conversation warmed, I said to him, ' Yes, but you 
forget the other side.' He brought his clinched fist 
down upon the table till it rang again, and his voice 
shook the room as he thundered in reply, ' There is 
no other side ! ' " 1 Such intolerance of others' 
opinions and motives is hard to live with. Never- 
theless, there grew up among his colleagues a gen- 
uine respect and admiration for his absolute sincer- 
ity, and in his later years the feeling toward him 
became more kindly than at the first. 

Sumner used always to assert the precedence of 
the Senate even over the Supreme Court and cab- 
inet, saying, "We make justices and cabinet min- 
isters." He sought to uphold the best traditions of 
the Senate, taking his official duties seriously, even 
in such matters as punctuality and regularity of 
attendance. "A senator cannot leave his place 
more than a soldier," was his reply to a flattering 
invitation which would have taken him away from 
a session to address a New York assemblage. On 
1 Orations, Vol. I, p. 256. 



SUMNEK'S PEKSONALITY 396 

the day following the Brooks assault his seat was 
vacant for the first time ; till the summons to his 
mother's death-bed, a dozen years later, he had 
never been absent from a Senate session except be- 
cause of illness. He repeatedly insisted that Con- 
gress had no right to adjourn, however great the 
discomfort of life in Washington, until the needed 
work of legislation was completed. For himself, he 
cleared his desk each day of the mass of detail, and 
it was his custom to remain in the capital at the end 
of sessions, until everything needing his attention 
was disposed of. In committee service it was the 
testimony of his colleagues that he was efficient and 
energetic in carrying forward the work, yet consid- 
erate in his treatment of the minority. 

Few men in public life have been so generous in 
allowing the calls and requests of strangers as well 
as of constituents to trespass upon their time and 
strength. But he would waste not a moment 
upon such applicants, when he was deep in the 
preparation of a speech or engaged upon some 
other task of his office. At such times, "How are 
you? Sit down," would be the brusque greeting 
from the desk, at which, with hardly a glance, the 
writer would continue his work. Often the em- 
barrassed visitor, finding that his presence was 
forgotten, would rise, saying, "I see you are busy ; 
I'll call again," only to receive the reply, " But 
I'm always busy; what is your point?" and the 
caller who had hoped for an hour's discussion 
would go away feeling that five minutes had been 



396 CHARLES SUMNER 

grudgingly given. To reporters and others who 
sought information from him, Sumner was frank 
and communicative as far as he thought best. If 
the caller persisted in pushing his questions beyond 
that point, the answer would be, "I can' t speak of 
that;" further importunity would be met by a 
stony stare. Like other public men, Sumner was 
often approached by persons who sought to take 
advantage of their friendship or acquaintance with 
him to advance some private interest ; frequently 
a corporation, seeking legislative favors, would 
persuade men of his acquaintance to call upon him. 
Sumner resented such " relaying," and whenever 
he suspected, justly or unjustly, that this was being 
attempted, he would become brusque and re- 
pellent. It sometimes seemed that the higher the 
rank or the closer the acquaintance of the caller, 
the more unpleasant grew his manner. This ready 
suspicion, brusqueness and irritability were doubt- 
less due in large measure to Sumner's physical disa- 
bilities, particularly to the pain to which he was 
constantly subject in his later years and to his lack 
of restful sleep. Indeed, in the last two years of 
his life, he hardly ever slept without recourse to 
morphia. 

He was jealous for the good name of the Senate 
as to language and manners, and the dread of un- 
popularity did not deter him from demanding a 
like observance of senatorial dignity from others. 
After much provocation, he denounced Douglas's 
indulgence in coarse personalities, rebuked the 



SUMNER'S PERSONALITY 397 

" plantation manners" of Mason and Butler, pro- 
tested against Abbott's threat of a duel, and even 
moved the expulsion of a Delaware senator who had 
repeatedly come to the Senate in a state of intoxica- 
tion. Such school-mastering of one's associates is 
usually pleasurable neither to the critic nor to the 
one criticized, yet it was doubtless salutary for the 
Senate. 

No American of Sumner's day had a wider or more 
distinguished circle of personal friends. It is true 
that between him and his political associates at some 
stage differences almost always arose, and political 
differences also caused sad ruptures in his relations 
with friends whom he loved like brothers, as in the 
case of Hillard, of Howe, of Dana, and of Lieber. 
In most of these divisive issues of morals and poli- 
tics, it would seem as if Sumner were in the right, 
yet it cannot be doubted that his over-pertinacious 
insistence upon his own point of view as the only 
one possible for a right-minded man, put a severe 
strain upon friendship. Until he entered the Sen- 
ate, Sumner's associations were decidedly academic, 
and he had been brought into deep and abiding 
fellowship with the leaders of American thought 
and literature. Fortunate, indeed, was the young- 
man who could grow up into intimate relations with 
Story and Greenleaf, Quincy and Channing. Among 
the friends of his prime were Longfellow, Whittier, 
Holmes, Emerson, Hawthorne, Lincoln, Bancroft, 
Prescott, and a score of those whom America de- 
lights to honor. It is no exaggeration to say that 



39b CHAKLES SUMNER 

no other American of his time had so wide and 
eminent an acquaintance abroad, and this intimacy 
with leaders of public opinion in England, France 
and Germany not only broadened his own vision 
but became a national asset, for during the Civil 
War the administration was kept in touch with 
shiftings of public sentiment in England hardly 
more through the channels of the State Department 
than through Sumner's correspondence. 

In his unrelenting warfare against slavery and 
other forms of social injustice Sumner found his 
stanchest supporters among the preachers and 
members of Christian churches of every denomina- 
tion, yet he himself paid little heed to formal re- 
ligious ordinances. At the age of twenty -two, he 
replied to a college friend, who had written to him 
in grave anxiety for his spiritual welfare, in a letter 
of singular candor : " . . . I do not think that 
I have a basis for faith to build upon. I am with- 
out religious feeling. ... I believe, though, 
that my love to my neighbor ... is pure and 
strong. Certainly I do feel an affection for every 
thing that God created ; and this feeling is my re- 
ligion." And he quoted Coleridge's lines begin- 
ning, 

" He prayeth well, who loveth well 
Both man and bird and beast," 

as illustrating his feeling. 

In his more mature years it was doubtless Chan- 
ning's influence that was strongest in moulding his 
thought on matters of ethics and religion. It meant 



SUMNER'S PERSONALITY 399 

much for Sumner that for nearly ten years he was 
brought close to this great leader of men ou terms 
of intimate and almost idolizing friendship. But 
in King's Chapel (Unitarian) where for a time he 
used to occupy his fathers place at the head of the 
family pew, and in most other Boston churches 
Sumner found that the Christianity that was being- 
preached concerned itself little with the slave or 
with the humanitarian causes to which his life was 
devoted. To do a man's part in bringing in t he 
new day was Sumner's task ; he tortured himself 
with no anxieties about saving his own soul. "I 
never knew a man," declared one of his private 
secretaries, ' l with a firmer grasp upon the faith 
in the good God. He once said to a friend in my 
presence that he would not turn over his hand to 
know whether he should consciously live again or 
not, so sure was he that all was for the best.' 1 ' And 
this same high optimism was the source of his faith 
in the dark days before and during the war. In a 
universe ruled as he believed by moral law, it was 
inconceivable to him that Slavery could triumph in 
the contest with Freedom. 

Sumner's friendship was pervaded by a warmth 
of sympathy rarely to be found in a man. ' ' Heaven 
lend me in perpetuity," wrote Greenleaf, "your 
ever-gushing fountain of self-denying kindness to 
friends ! " 2 He seems never to have been happier 

1 F. V. Balch, quoted by Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 344. 

2 In Washington, during the strenuous days of the war, he 
gave of his time and strength without stint in aiding those who 
were trying to get to some wounded soldier or to recover the 



400 CHAKLES SUMNEK 

than when helping a man of aspiration and promise 
to secure a firmer foothold on the ladder. He would 
leave his desk to go out on 'change and raise among 
his friends the funds to send an ambitious boy 
to college. His ardent and tireless efforts to gain 
recognition for Crawford, his eager commendations 
of the works of Lieber and Longfellow, of Prescott 
and Motley, to European critics are typical of his 
abounding helpfulness. It may be that we have 
Sumner to thank for The Scarlet Letter. While 
George Bancroft was Secretary of the Navy, under 
date of January 9, 1846, Sumner sent the following 
letter to Mrs. Bancroft : 



11 You will think that I never appear, except as a 
beggar. Very well. I never beg for myself. But I 
do beg now most earnestly for another ; for a friend 
of mine and of your husband's ; for a man of letters, 
of gentleness. 

"I have heard to-day of the poverty of Haw- 
thorne. He is very poor indeed. He has already 
broken up the humble and inexpensive home which 
he had established in Concord, because it was too 
expensive. You know how simply he lived. He 
lived almost on nothing ; but even that nothing has 
gone. Let me say to your husband (for I would 
not quote Latin to a lady) 

bodies of their dead. Colonel Higginson says of him : " I have 
never known in pnblic life so prompt and faithful a correspond- 
ent, or one so ready to espouse the cause of some individual, 
man or woman, who needed aid. He had no hand of hench- 
men, no one who had heen won to support him for value re- 
ceived ; hut the blessings of the poor, the friendless, the power- 
less were his." — Contemporaries, p. 290. 



SUMNER'S PERSONALITY 401 

11 'Nil habuit Codrus. Quia enim negat? Et tamen illud 
Perdidit iufelix totuiu nihil.' 

"Sorue of bis savings were lent to Mr. Ripley at 
Brook Farm ; but he is not able to repay them, and 
poor Hawthorne (that most gentle true nature) has 
not wherewithal to live. I need not speak of his 
genius to you. He is an ornament of the country ; 
nor is there a person of any party who would not 
hear with delight that the author of such Gold- 
smithian prose, as he writes, has received honor and 
office from his country. 

"I plead for him earnestly, and couut upon your 
friendly interference to keep his name present to the 
mind of your husband, so that it may not be pushed 
out of sight by the intrusive legion of clamorous 
office-seekers or by other public cares. 

"Some post-office, some custom-house, something 
that will yield daily bread, — anything in the gift of 
your husband, — or that his potent influence might 
command — will confer great happiness upon Haw- 
thorne, and, I believe, dear Mrs. Bancroft, it will 
confer greater happiness on you. . . . 

"I wish I could have some assurance from your 
husband that Hawthorne should be cared for. . . . 

"I wrote your husband lately on peace; but he 
will not heed my words. 

" Believe me, dear Mrs. Bancroft, 

"Yours sincerely (provided you do not forget 
Hawthorne) 

" Charles Sumner." 



Bancroft replied, under date of January 13, 1846. 
. . . " As to Hawthorne, I have been most per- 
severingly his friend. I am glad you go for the 
good rule of dismissing wicked Whigs and putting 



402 CHARLES SUMNER 

in Democrats. Set me down as without influence, 
if so soon as the course of business will properly 
permit, you do not find Hawthorne an office-holder." 

Six weeks later Bancroft wrote to President Polk, 
endorsing the appointment of Hawthorne as Sur- 
veyor at the Salem Custom House. 1 

Brief mention must be made of Sumner's marriage. 
In early life he is said to have met with a crushing 
disappointment. In later years his conversation 
and letters gave frank expression to his loneliness 
and his envy of the domestic joys of his friends, but 
until he had become middle-aged and famous he 
seemed to have renounced all thought of such hap- 
piness for himself. In the weeks following his 
mother's death, he confided to a friend that now for 
the first time in his life he might feel at liberty to 
marry, adding the somewhat cool -blooded explana- 
tion that he had never before had the means to sup- 
port a family. For several years it had been his 
habit to dine as often as once a week at the home 
of Congressman Hooper, and it was no surprise to 
intimate friends when Sumner announced his en- 
gagement to Mr. Hooper's daughter-in-law, a hand- 
some and ambitious young widow of twenty-eight, 
with one daughter eight years of age. He entered 
ui)on his new experience with high hopes and with 
the felicitations of a host of friends, — none more 
sympathetic and cordial than an exquisite letter 
from George Bancroft. 2 To Whittier, Sumner 

1 Howe, Life and Letters of George Bancroft, Vol. I, pp. 264- 
267. ' 2 Pierce, Vol. IV, p. 303. 



SUMNER'S PERSONALITY 403 

wrote : " To-day [October 17, 1866] at three o'clock, 
I shall be married, and at the age of fifty- five begin 
to live." But his hopes were doomed to speedy 
disappointment. October and May did not prove 
congenial, and before the first anniversary of their 
marriage, they had separated forever. A few years 
later Sumner secured an uncontested divorce. 
Throughout this bitter experience he retained the 
affectionate regard of his friends. Mr. Hooper, 
whose sympathies would naturally be with his 
daughter-in-law, relying, as he said, " upon Sum- 
ner's manly strength and magnanimity," tried to 
bring about a reconciliation, but his failure to do 
so did not cloud his friendship and admiration for 
Sumner, with whom he remained on terms of the 
closest intimacy till death. 

In the first fourteen years of Sumner's life in 
Washington, he occupied modest and inexpensive 
lodgings. But in 1867 he bought a house, overlook- 
ing Lafayette Square, standing upon a part of the 
site now occupied by the Arlington Hotel. This 
was to be his home for the remaining years of his 
life, and into his arrangements and furnishings he 
wrought his own individuality, so that it became 
one of the notable houses in Washington. He gave 
much thought to the disposal of his treasures, the 
fruits of years of foreign travel, grouping them ac- 
cording to some principles of association, which he 
delighted to expound to his friends. "So numer- 
ous were the paintings that not only every inch of 
wall space in the halls as well as in the principal 



404 CHARLES STJMNEE 

rooms was covered, but many pictures hung on the 
doors, stood in the corners, acted as screens for fire- 
places, or stood on movable easels." For years 
Sumner had been an enthusiastic collector of en- 
gravings, of which he was a better judge than of 
paintings. The best of these, to the number of 
nearly one hundred and fifty, framed in accordance 
with his own notions, hung upon his walls, where 
they were later appraised at over $10,000. Though 
an omnivorous reader, Sumner always placed large 
dependence on public libraries, so that in his own 
library most of the books were "tools, rarities or 
authors' presentation copies." Among the rarities 
were the Bible which solaced Bunyau in Bedford 
Gaol, Erasmus's "St. Luke," with original pen- 
and-ink designs by Holbein on the margins, Mil- 
ton's "Pindar," and a host of others, which now, 
with Sumner's splendid collection of autographs, fill 
several cases in the treasure-room of the Harvard 
University Library. Among his autographs, the 
one Sumner prized most was in an album, "kept at 
Geneva, 1608-1640, in which Milton had recorded 
his name, an extract from Comus, and a line from 
Horace." In the later years of his life, he "gath- 
ered new works about him until every table, chair 
and lounge was groaning under their load, and 
heaps so encumbered the floor that navigation 
among the piles was difficult if not dangerous." 

To this scholar's retreat a warm welcome was al- 
ways extended to congenial friends. Phillips and 
Howe, Palfrey and E. L. Pierce, and other New Eug- 



SUMNEK'S PEKSONALITY 405 

landers were his guests when in Washington. Caleb 
Cushing was oftenest at his table. Dickens dined 
here with Stanton ; in fact, few foreigners of emi- 
nence visited Washington without being dined by 
Sumner. It may be doubted whether Suniuer ever 
knew happier hours than when he gathered a few 
choice friends about his own table, or sat discours- 
ing with them of the teeming reminiscences sug- 
gested by rare books and engravings which crowded 
them on every hand. 

It was a marked characteristic of Sumner that he 
" had no humor himself and little sense of it in 
others." One who knew him intimately as a young 
man declared that though an interesting talker, "he 
had no lightness of touch, . . . was put off his 
feet by the least persiflage ; if it was tried on him, 
his expression was one of complete astonishment." 
Holmes said that anything of the nature of a jest 
came very hard to Sumner, who would look be- 
wildered and almost distressed with pleasantry that 
set a company laughing. He quoted a common 
friend as saying that "if one told Charles Sumner 
that the moon was made of green cheese, he would 
controvert the alleged fact in all sincerity, aud give 
good reasons why it could not be so." Schurz de- 
clared that Sumner "almost always failed to see the 
point of the quaint anecdotes or illustrations with 
which Lincoln was fond of elucidating his argument, 
as with a flashlight. Sumner not seldom quoted such 
Lincolnisms to me, and asked me with an air of 
innocent bewilderment, whether I could guess what 



406 CHARLES SUMNEK 

the President could possibly have meant." ' It was 
this lack of humor which made him always take 
himself with such portentous seriousness, and pre- 
vented his relaxing to meet his fellows on their 
common plane. Mrs. Julia Ward Howe once in- 
vited him to meet Edwin Booth at her house. He 
replied, "I do not know that I wish to meet your 
friend. I have outlived my interest in individuals." 
In her diary Mrs. Howe recorded this somewhat 
ungracious utterance with the comment: " God 
Almighty, by the last accounts, has not got so far 
as this!' 72 A nagging colleague once attributed 
Sumner's persistent criticism of the administration 
to dyspepsia, whereupon Sumner assured the Senate 
that he had never suffered from dyspepsia in his 
life. When questioned as to the alleged venality of 
the Senate, he gave as his ground for believing that 
the stories were exaggerated : "I am quite sure that 
no one ever approached me with an underhand pro- 
posal." The story is told that " one afternoon when 
he was leaving Dr. Howe's garden at South Boston, 
the doctor's youngest daughter ran out from the 
house and called to him : ' ' Good-bve, Mr. Sumner ! ' ' 
His back was already turned, but he faced about 
like an officer on parade, and said with formal 
gravity : " Good-evening, child ! " so that the little 
girl's sprightly mother could not help laughing at 
him. It is a great pity that Sumner did not know 
the joys of a home of his own in his early manhood. 

1 Reminiscences, Vol. II, p. 312. 
a Ibid., p. 174. 



SUMKEK'S PEKSONALITY 407 

"With the corrective of wife and child, his outlook 
upon life might have become not only humane but 
simply and frankly human. 

Sumner was not without certain foibles which 
grew upon him with age and attracted the more 
attention because of his greatness. Thus, he prided 
himself upon his artistic sense : he was much given 
to quoting poetry, yet with no fine feeling of its val- 
ues ; he collected paintings and other works of art, 
enjoyed haunting studios, took great delight in 
the theatre and opera, wrote not a little in the way 
of art criticism, and in his later years devoted all 
the time and more money than he could spare to the 
collecting of old engravings, manuscripts and other 
literary curios. Yet in none of these fields of inter- 
est did he show genuine artistic discrimination. His 
most intimate friend among artists, William Wet- 
more Story, said of him : " The world of art, as art 
purely, was to him always a half-opened, if not a 
locked world. He longed to enter into it, and feel 
as an artist does ; but the keys were never given to 
him." His taste in sculpture may be indicated by 
his congratulations to Greenough (to whom he once 
referred as "I doubt not the most accomplished 
artist alive") upon the completion of his " Wash- 
ington" as "sure to give you fame," though he 
warns him that he must not be annoyed by the 
"criticisms of people knowing nothing about art." ' 

1 For sixty years this sculptural abortion — " Tlie Father of 
his Country," nude to the waist, with a blanket over his knees, 
seated in an ornate Roman chair, his hand upraised as if sig- 



408 CHAELES SUMNER 

Sumner bequeathed his collection of nearly a hun- 
dred paintings to the Boston Art Museum, author- 
izing its trustees to sell what they did not care to 
keep. More than two-thirds were forthwith sold ; 
of the pictures retained, only two are occasionally 
shown in the galleries. 

A foible which subjected Sumner to some criticism 
and which became more prominent in his later years, 
was a craving for approval, seemingly as inconsist- 
ent with his breadth of mind as with his independ- 
ence in action. He showed little of this in his col- 
lege days, and intimate letters indicate that he re- 
turned from his tour of Europe singularly unspoiled 
by the unprecedented attentions showered upon 
him which could hardly fail to turn the head of 
so young a man. But the lionizing which awaited 
him, and the sudden fame which followed his first 
oratorical triumphs heightened his appreciation of 
himself and of his powers. Night after night, the 
facing of great audiences under the spell of his mag- 
nificent presence and splendid eloquence almost in- 
evitably made the speaker more statuesque. It was 

naling a passing car— sat facing the Capitol. At last it has 
been suppressed. 

Sumner, however, rendered a genuine service to art by 
a speech in the Senate showing the absurdity of making a con- 
tract for a statue of Abraham Lincoln, to be executed by Viunie 
Ream, an aspiring young woman from the West, who had never 
attempted anything more ambitions than a portrait bust. He 
insisted that national dignity demanded the very best examples 
of American sculpture for its capital, and he referred to several 
sculptural groups of a much lower grade, — nuisances which 
have not yet been abated. Speech in Senate, July 17, 1866. 



SUMNER'S PERSONALITY 409 

noted that as he crossed the Public Garden in Bos- 
ton, he had a habit of pausing to gaze upon tin- 
bronze of Story, and the irreverent concluded that 
he was wondering how he himself would look upon 
a pedestal, — as he now stands over against his some- 
time teacher. He used to ask his friends if they 
could see his resemblance to Edmund Burke ; and 
three pictures of Burke were to be found in his 
study. As he strode the street or mounted the 
platform, people thought he was not unpleasantly 
conscious of the impression he was making. In the 
Senate he knew, as every one else knew, that for 
years he had no peer in learning, in eloquence and, 
by a strange combination of causes, in influence. 
He was at all times a bit forensic ; he never quite 
shook off the senator's toga. With his growing 
fame and power, in his last years the savor of in- 
cense became more sweet to his nostrils, and he un- 
consciously exacted not only agreement but defer- 
ence from those who would be his friends. The 
opening of his morning's mail was quite a function, 
at which he was obviously gratified to have his 
guests present, as he read selections from the letters 
of this and that distinguished correspondent. In 
social gatherings he expected to lead the conversa- 
tion, to dominate the dinner-table. The caustic 
editor of The Nation wrote to a friend of "a dinner 
at the * Radical Club,' with Sumner opposite me 
smiling like a benign god on his disciples and dis- 
pensing wisdom piecemeal ; " and added other words 
which showed Sumner's weaknesses not more clearlj 



410 CHARLES SUMNER 

than some of the temperamental limitations of his 
gifted critic. 

But if this love of deference and approval seem a 
surprising weakness in so great a man, two things 
are to be remembered. To Sumner praise was a 
thing which it was ever more blessed to give than 
to receive. Whenever a friend achieved some suc- 
cess or produced a good piece of work, no one was 
more prompt in generous congratulation and en- 
couragement ; and he who found such joy in lavish- 
ing praise where it was merited, felt chilled if 
others withheld approval when he deserved well. 
What seemed to some an inordinate love of commen- 
dation was rather, as Senator Hoar says, a love of 
sympathy. Moreover, keenly as he appreciated 
praise, he never aped the courtier or shifty politi- 
cian to cater for it. Grateful, indeed, was the ap- 
proval of friends and of the public, when it came ; 
but his eyes were fixed on the stars, and through 
good and evil report he swerved his course neither 
to the right hand nor to the left to catch popular 
favor. Indeed, Sumner's faults and foibles were 
but the defects of his qualities. If he was at times 
unpractical, it was through loyalty to a high ideal. 
If he was over-persistent in urging his favorite 
measures, it was from an excess of zeal for right as 
he saw it. If he showed little willingness to yield 
even on minor points in order to secure common 
action, it was but an evidence of that uncompromi- 
sing tenacity of purpose so rare among public men 
at the time when he entered the Senate. 



SUMNER'S PERSONALITY 41 i 

These characteristics made Suirmer hard to get on 
with, but they left no cloud upou his tame. Far 
outweighing them were qualities which won respect 
and admiration even from bitter opponents. Known 
of all men were the stainless purity of his life, his 
freedom from any unworthy self-seeking or ambi- 
tion, his generous sympathy with the oppressed of 
every race and land, his magnanimity, and his 
dauntless courage. But to those who came closest 
to him as a man, he revealed qualities which stran- 
gers would hardly have believed he could possess, — a 
character as simple as that of a child, gentleness and 
tenderness rarely blended with such rugged strength, 
and a sympathy so warm, so deep, as to make his 
friendship a treasure and an inspiration. 



CHAPTEE XIX 

CIVIL EIGHTS AND THE BATTLE -FLAG RESOLU- 
TION : CLOSING SCENES 

To Sumner's way of thinking, the war's results 
for the freedmen were but half secured when they 
were given the ballot. He believed that enlightened 
statesmanship and justice required that the negroes 
be placed upon precisely the same plane with the 
whites. In the next session of Congress, therefore, 
Sumner made a most stubborn fight to secure the 
passage of his Civil Eights Bill, which included 
sweeping prohibitioDS of discriminations on account 
of race or color, in railway cars, theatres, inns, 
churches, and cemeteries, and in jury service. 
Every device of the expert parliamentarian did 
Sumner briug to the support of this measure. 1 He 
sought to attach it as a rider to the Amnesty Bill, 
declariDg that the act of justice and the act of 
generosity should stand together. By the casting- 
vote of the Vice-President he succeeded, but the 
amendment weighted the Amnesty Bill so heavily 
that it failed to secure the requisite two-thirds vote. 
Months later the bitter contest was renewed, and 
carried through substantially the same stages. At 

1 Dec. 20, 1871. Congressional Records, 42d Congress, 2d Ses- 
sion, p. 244. H. E. Flack, The Adoption of the Fourteenth 
Amendment, p. 250. 



CLOSING SCENES 413 

one juncture Sumner's opponents took an unfair- 
advantage of him. At 5 : 45 a. m., at the end of an 
all-night session from which illness had compelled 
him to be absent, his favorite measure was called up 
without warning, was stripped of almost all its force 
by amendments, and then passed. Coining to the 
Senate a few hours later, Sumner denounced this 
underhand proceeding, and reintroduced his own 
measure. The outcome of months of most persistent 
fighting was defeat : the Amnesty Bill became a 
law, but civil rights secured no additional safeguards 
from this Congress. 

During this session Sumner was drawn into a con- 
troversy which aroused not a little bitterness at the 
time, but which has now passed almost entirely out 
of mind. The question arose over some suspicious 
circumstances under which arms had been sold to 
France during the Franco-Prussian War. In a 
study of the present scope, it is not necessary to go 
into the matter in detail. Sumner and Schurz re- 
ceived information which led them to believe that 
sales of arms by the United States to agents of 
France had been made and continued in violation of 
the obligations of neutrality. After years of 
strenuous insistence upon these obligations in the 
controversy over the Alabama claims, Sumner could 
not tolerate the idea that his own country should 
show herself lax in this regard. He therefore 
moved the appointment of a committee of investiga- 
tion. The proposition was sharply antagonized by 
champions of the President, and the debate — in 



414 CHARLES SIJMNEK 

which Schurz took the leading part because of Sum - 
ner's ill-health — led to much angry discussion. 
Sumner and Schurz were denounced as i l emissaries ' ' 
and " spies ' ' of foreign governments, their treason- 
able offense consisting in their raising the question 
whether their country had been doing its full duty 
as a neutral. The motion was finally carried. 
Sumner stated that his health would uot permit his 
serving on such a committee. Its members were 
then elected by the Senate, and, in disregard of prec- 
edent and of fair-dealing, not one of the seven was 
chosen from those who had spoken in favor of the 
inquiry, although its most strenuous opponents 
were given places. The voluminous report of this 
committee disclosed no ground for blame of the War 
Department or of other officers of the government. 
Sumner assailed the report as ' ' wanting in ordinary 
fairness, unbecoming in tone, unjust to senators who 
had deemed it their duty to move the inquiry, and 
ridiculous in its attempt to expound international 
law." Xo fair-minded man could question Sumner s 
conscientiousness in forcing this investigation, but 
many of his friends regretted that he had allowed so 
much of his waning strength to be diverted to a con- 
troversy, almost the only result of which was to em- 
bitter still further his relations with the administra- 
tion. 

But the subject most in men's minds during this 
session was the approaching presidential election. 
Aside from his antagonism to Grant, Sumner would 
have opposed his reelection on general principles : 



CLOSING SCENES 415 

he renewed at this session a measure which he had 
advocated in previous years, — a constitutional 
amendment making a President ineligible for a 
second term. He qualified this, however, by a 
clause which made it inapplicable to the pending 
election. A resolution which he introduced later 
aimed to secure the election of President by popu Un- 
vote. 

In 1872 there were many who had been leaders in 
Republican party councils who now believed that 
the reelection of Grant would not be for the best in- 
terests of the party or of the country. His personal 
associations, and "aide-de-camp-info" tendencies 
(as Sumner called them) ; his lack of skill or tact in 
the choice and retention of trustworthy advisers ; 
his high-handed pursuit of his own will, as in the 
San Domingo scheme ; the abuses that he allowed 
to go unchecked — all these created the wide-spread 
feeling which gave rise to the Liberal Republican 
party. This came into existence primarily to pre- 
vent Grant's reelection ; its leaders included many 
men of light and leading, notably Schurz and Trum- 
bull, and a group of the most influential journalists, 
among whom were Horace Greeley, Whitelaw Reid 
and Samuel Bowles. A convention was called to 
meet in Cincinnati, May 1, 1872, and for weeks in 
advance of that date leaders of the movement be- 
sought Sumner to ally himself openly with them, 
urging the steadying influence which his support 
would give to the enterprise. 

But Sumner was always reluctant to commit him- 



416 CHAKLES SUMNEB 

self as to the choice of candidates. He seemed to 
regard such campaign work as hardly fitting in a 
senator, and for the personal side of politics he had 
little liking or aptitude. He frankly acknowledged 
that in the pending election his two desires were 
"(1) the protection of the colored race, and (2) the 
defeat of Grant. " There were shrewd politicians 
who believed that if he would come out with a hearty 
endorsement of the movement, his own name would 
be the probable choice of the Cincinnati convention. 
No other man personified so fully the grounds for op- 
position to Grant, and there is no question that Sum- 
ner's heart was set upon reconciliation between the 
sections, though his methods did not appeal to men 
of the South. His failing health was a serious ob- 
jection to his candidacy. It is hardly possible that 
he could have been elected, for his name would not 
have been acceptable to Democrats, North or South. 1 
Nor would he have made a strong President, partic- 
ularly at that juncture. Sumner had had singularly 
little experience in administrative work, and it is 
hard to imagine his exhibiting the tact necessary to 
get on well with the heads of departments, or with 

Nevertheless his name did receive serious consideration from 
some Democrats. In the Springfield Republican of Jnne 18, 
1872, appeared a letter, signed "A Jeffersonian Democrat" aud 
addressed to members of the National Democratic Convention, 
to assemble in Baltimore the following month. Reprinted as a 
broadside, this letter is in the Sumner Collection in the Harvard 
Library. It is headed: "For President, Charles Sumner of 
Massachusetts. For Vice-President. William S. Groesbeck of 
Ohio.'' It puts Sumner forward as the candidate who would 
draw the largest following away from Grant. 



CLOSING SCENES 417 

Congress. His talent and his task lay in quite other 
lines. 

It is difficult to see what advantage Sumner ex- 
pected would result from his reserve. Had he come 
out into the open, he might have helped steady the 
opposition to Grant and force at Cincinnati a nomi- 
nation that would have given promise of success. 
Even after the preposterous choice of Greeley had 
been made, Sumner still delayed in declaring his 
intentions. He wrote to a friend: u Nor have I 
ever given a hint to a human being as to my future 
course. ... Of this I shall not speak until I 
can see the whole field, and especially the bearing 
on the colored race." He found himself between 
two fires, importuned on the one hand to help lead 
the Liberal Eepublicans to victory, and on the 
other, in spite of the grievous wounds he had re- 
ceived at its hands, not to desert the party with 
which from its beginning he had fought so valiantly. 
Wilson, who had earlier tried to heal the breach 
between Grant and Sumner, was now eager for the 
vice-presidency, and renewed his appeals to Sum- 
ner's loyalty to party. Sumner kept upon terms of 
friendship with Wilson, but from the press and from 
the cartoonist he received much undeserved abuse 
for his " sulking in his tent" and deserting his old 
party. 

Yet his mind had long been made up : the session 
should not end without his setting forth the reasons 
why in his opinion Grant should not be reelected. 
Under cover of speaking to his motion for the indef- 



418 CHARLES SUMNER 

inite postponement of the appropriation bill, on the 
last day of May — four days before the end of the 
session — he launched into a fierce philippic against 
the President. The Seuate chamber and galleries 
soon were thronged. Sumner spoke with intense 
feeling. There were vulnerable points enough in 
Grant's career as Chief Executive ; ' nevertheless, it 
was felt that Sumner overshot his mark. He ar- 
raigned Grant as a Borgia, a Farnese, a Barberini, 
"a Csesar plotting against the peace and life of the 
Republic.' 7 Such denunciations showed an utter 
misconception of Grant's character. Moreover, 
Sumner injured the effect of his words by making no 
mention of the general's transcendent service to the 
nation during the war, — service which in the minds 
of the people far outweighed the venial offenses 
which Sumner was here exaggerating. Even among 

1 Snmner ridiculed Grant's preparation for the presidency. 
In bad taste he quoted Stanton, who had recently died, as de- 
claring : "He [Grant] cannot govern this country." He ar- 
raigned him for nepotism, citing newspaper assertions as to the 
number of his relatives who had become holders of office. He 
assailed his gift-taking with repayment with office, and rebuked 
him for quarrelsomeness, declaring that he spent his time '' lis- 
tening to stories from horse-cars, gobbling the gossip of his mil- 
itary ring, discoursing on imaginary griefs and nursing an unjust 
anger." As to bis conduct of foreign relations he declared: 
"Here the President touches nothing which he does not muddle. 
In every direction is muddle, — muddle with Spain, muddle 
with Cuba, muddle with the Black Republic, muddle with dis- 
tant Corea, muddle with Venezuela, muddle with Russia, muddle 
with England, — on all sides one diversified muddle." 
" I dismiss the apologies with the conclusion that in matters to 
which they invite attention his presidency is an enormous fail- 
ure." — "Republicanism vs. Grantism," Works, Vol. XV, pp. 
83-171. 



CLOSING SCENES 419 

Grant's opponents there was a feeling that Sumner's 
arraignment had been both overwrought and ill- 
timed. In the months before the Cincinnati con- 
vention it might have united the opposition. Hut 
it was now too late, for his renomination and (it is 
not too much to say) his reelection had been assured 
from the moment Greeley was accepted as the Lib- 
eral Republicans' candidate. Sumner always held 
extravagant notions of the power of Senate speeches 
to determine political action ; at the end of his 
speech he firmly believed that his words had given 
the coup tie grace to Grant's hopes for a second term, 
and was utterly astounded and incredulous when a 
friend expressed doubt whether his speech would 
now have much effect upon the election. 1 

Not until the end of July did Sumner declare for 
whom he should vote. Then, in a letter to colored 
citizens who sought his advice, he announced his 
intention to support Greeley as " unquestionably 
the surest trust of the colored people. ' ' In comment 
upon this letter in Harper's Weekly, Curtis turned 
back upon Sumner the words which Sumner had 
used to him upon his endorsement of Grant : "You 
have taken a tremendous responsibility. God keep 
your conscience clear ! ' ' '-' 

*Carl Schurz, in Massachusetts Memorial to Sumner, p. 241. 
"When Bout well expressed the belief that < rrant would be elected, 
Sumner " held up his hands and in a tone of grief said • 'You 
and Wilson are the only ones who tell me he has any chance.' " 
— Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. II, p. 217. 

2 Curtis said to him : "The slave of yesterday in Alabama, 
in Carolina, in Mississippi, will his heart leap with joy or droop 
dismayed when he knows that Charles Sumner has given his 



420 CHARLES SUMNER 

Sumner wished to take part in the campaign, — 
at least, to present his views to his constituents from 
the platform of Faneuil Hall. But the summer 
found him so seriously unstrung by the labors and 
trials of the recent months in Congress that friend 
and physician united in insisting upon his seeking 
relaxation and restoration abroad. On the morning 
that he sailed, there was given to the press his mes- 
sage. It was more temperate than his recent speech 
in its attacks upon the President j insisted that in 
all his labors in relation to reconstruction he had 
been looking forward to a time of reconciliation ; 
and rejoiced at the acceptance by the Democrats of 
the South of the Cincinnati platform as the best 
pledge that the era of harmony was at hand. 

In Liverpool Sumner was met by the unwelcome 
announcement that at conventions of the Democrats 
and Liberal Republicans, held while he was on the 
ocean, he had been nominated by acclamation for 
governor of Massachusetts. The object in using his 
name was to help out the Greeley campaign, but 

great name as a club to smite the party that gave him and his 
children their liberty?" The tears started to his eyes, that 
good gray head bowed down, but he answered sadly, " I must 
do my duty." And he did it.— Orations, Vol. Ill, pp. 246- 
247. J. M. Forbes was another friend who besought Sumner 
to reverse his decision : " Nobody knows better than you that 
when his kindness of heart, his fear of violence, or his prejudices 
and hobbies are concerned, Greeley can never be depended on 
in a pinch. . . . Now you are the very antipode of Greeley 
in firmness and tenacity of purpose. You may for a while act 
as a balance-wheel, but with his Democratic millions at his back 
I have not the slightest hope that you can keep him out of the 
reactionary vortex (if he should be elected)." — Letters and Recol- 
lections, Vol. II, p. 182. 



CLOSING SCENES 421 

Sumner immediately sent an absolute refusal to ac- 
cept the nomination, aud another name was substi- 
tuted. 

After a wearying week in London, he weut to 
Paris, where he spent a mouth, receiving many 
kind attentions from French and American friends. 
He was much disappointed at not finding there 
Dr. Brown-Sequard, who had recently gone to 
America. He seemed far from well, and greatly 
depressed. To a friend he declared : "I know the 
integrity of my conduct and the motives of my life. 
Never were they more clear or absolutely blame- 
less than now. But never in the worst days of 
slavery have I been more vindictively pursued or 
more falsely misrepresented." He found stimulus 
aud relief from his depression in indulging his 
eager quest for rare books and manuscripts. He 
had interesting interviews with Laboulaye, Thiers, 
the Due d'Aumale and with Gambetta, whom he 
had much wished to meet. As they parted, Sum- 
ner said: "I am not French, and I know your 
country too little to be justified in pronouncing 
judgment on her political principles ; but you wish 
to found a republic without religion. In America 
we should consider such an undertaking chimerical 
and doomed to certain defeat." 

After a couple of days with Motley at The Hague, 
Sumner returned to London, where he spent much 
time in the libraries and galleries, and in col- 
lecting curios. In these weeks in London and Paris 
he expended about six thousand dollars for auto- 



422 CHAKLES SUMNER 

graphs and literary rarities. Unfortunately, he 
had gained little skill as a bargainer or as a con- 
noisseur, so that as a purchaser he was the delight 
of the dealers. 

The morning before he left London for the last 
time, he breakfasted with Dean and Lady Stanley j 
he was next the guest of the Duke of Devonshire at 
Chatsworth ) regretfully declining an invitation to 
visit the Duke and Duchess of Argyll because of 
the length of the journey, he spent his last night in 
England with John Bright. The conversation took 
a wide range, but Bright noted "a great gentleness 
in all he said, with a sadness and a melancholy 
which left upon us the impression that he felt him- 
self seriously ill, and that his life of work was nearly 
ended." Upon landing in New York, he was much 
saddened to learn of the illness, soon followed by 
the death, of Greeley, broken-hearted by the loss of 
his wife and by his disastrous defeat. 

It was a depressing session upon which Sumner 
was now to enter. His health was so poor that he 
was obliged to ask relief from committee service. 
He went to the Senate daily for about two weeks, 
during which he did not neglect to urge his Civil 
Eights Bill and a bill to prevent race discrimina- 
tions in the schools of the District of Columbia. 
But from the middle of December to the close of the 
session he was compelled to absent himself from his 
seat ; in the special session beginning in March, he 
appeared but once, to present the credentials of his 
new colleague from Massachusetts. The call for the 



CLOSING SCENES 423 

Republican caucus at the opening of this session was 
addressed only to those who had supported the 
Republican platform and Grant, and no committee 
assignment was made by the caucus to Sumner or to 
any other member who had voted for Greeley. 

Probably no act of Sumner s political life led to 
more unexpected results than did the introduction 
by him of a certain bill early in the regular sessiou. 1 
Its main provision ran as follows : "Whereas the 
national unity and good- will among fellow-citizens 
can be assured only through oblivion of past differ- 
ences, and it is contrary to the usage of civilized 
nations to perpetuate the memory of civil war ; 
therefore, be it resolved, etc., that the names of 
battles with fellow-citizens shall not be continued in 
the Army Register, or placed on the regimental 
colors of the United States." In previous years 
Sumner had introduced measures of similar char- 
acter which had received the cordial approval of 
General Scott and General Anderson ; 2 they had 
aroused no wide spread attention, still less opposi- 
tion. But now. although the war spirit might be 
supposed to be allayed, apparently there was a dis- 
position to exact from Sumner the penalty for his 
desertion of the party. In the House, a bill of pre- 
cisely opposite intent was hastily passed, aud op- 
position was announced in the Senate ; but both 
measures were there laid upon the table because of 
Sumner's illness. 

1 December 2, 1872. Works, Vol. XV, p. 255. 

2 Supra, p. 262. 



424 CHAELES SUMNER 

It happened that at the time when he introduced 
this bill there was being held a special session of the 
Massachusetts legislature, — u a dead legislature, 
galvanized into life by the governor's proclama- 
tion " solely to attend to matters connected with the 
great fire in Boston. Sumner's bill caught the eye 
of an ex-soldier, who brought in a resolution 
strongly denouncing it. The end of the session was 
close at hand and less than one-fourth of those there 
present had been reelected to the new legislature 
which was to meet within three or four weeks. 
Members therefore acted under little sense of re- 
sponsibility, and in fact with slight observance of 
parliamentary formalities. An irregular report 
from the committee to which the matter had been 
referred denounced Sumner's bill as "an insult to 
the loyal soldiery of the nation" and as "meeting 
the unqualified condemnation of the people of the 
commonwealth." The debate upon the report was 
crowded into two days, and despite vigorous op- 
position, led by Colonel Charles R. Codman, it was 
adopted, largely owing to the insistence that it was 
demanded by the old soldiers. So hurried had 
been the procedure that it took the public by sur- 
prise. But the press and even the pulpit now came 
promptly to Sumner's defense. Whittier took the 
lead in a movement to secure the rescinding of the 
resolution of censure, and a petition, signed by 
more than 5, 000 names, including those most eminent 
in the commonwealth, was promptly presented to 
the new legislature and reinforced by an appeal, 



CLOSING SCENES 425 

signed by distinguished men from all over the 
country, including Chief-Justice Chase, William 
Cullen Bryant, and Frederick Douglass. The peti- 
tioners were more vigorously than tactfully repre- 
sented before the committee by ex -Governors Clan* in 
and Washburn and by the Bev. James Freeman 
Clarke. Senators and representatives who had 
been members of the previous legislature took 
offense at criticisms passed upon that body ; there 
was also surprising opposition from William Lloyd 
Garrison and from Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, who had 
been one of the petitioners for rescinding. Much 
was made of the alleged ' ' soldier feeling ' ' against 
Sumner's bill, and the point was urged that it was 
not competent for the present legislature to revoke 
a resolution of its predecessor. The result was that, 
while the public came to see Sumner's proposition 
in its true light, the legislature, by large majorities, 
refused to annul the censure. 

Sumner grieved over an injustice, which, had he 
been in health, he might have regarded with indif- 
ference. He longed to defend himself in the Senate, 
and would have attempted it at the risk of his life, 
had his physician not warned him that the strain 
might cause prolonged mental disability, the fate 
which he had always most dreaded. Months of en- 
forced absence from his place in the Senate made 
him morbid. To Vice-President Wilson he said : 
" If my Works were completed, and my Civil Eights 
Bill passed, no visitor could enter that door that 
would be more welcome than Death." Yet he was 



426 CHAELES SUMNEK 

the recipient of many letters of sympathy, and with 
the coming of spring he began to show signs of im- 
provement, so that he could take drives and spend 
some time each day at the Congressional Library in 
the revision and annotation of his Works. Wilson 
and he were soon to be brought into deeper sympa- 
t by, for the Vice-President was stricken by paralysis 
in May, so that both these friends and comrades of 
many years were to know months of disheartening 
interruption of their public service and of anxious 
effort to force their enfeebled powers in literary 
tasks which neither was to bring to completion. 
Sumner's friends urged him again to seek health 
abroad, but he felt that he could not afford such a 
vacation trip, and even made arrangements for a 
long lecture tour in the fall, in order to pay off 
something of the indebtedness incurred by his previ- 
ous lavish expenditures in Europe, and by his costly 
illness. But Wendell Phillips and other friends in- 
sisted upon his canceling these engagements and 
husbanding his strength. 

The months before the assembling of Congress 
brought him much cheer. He was gratified by an 
election to the Massachusetts Historical Society, 
from which his auti -slavery views had doubtless 
debarred him in his early mauhood. He had 
mi PPy reunions with Longfellow, Agassiz, Emerson, 
Holmes, Judge Hoar, and others at the monthly 
dinner of the Saturday Club, and he was cordially 
received at many gatherings of business and literary 
men. It was a joy in these last years of his life to 



CLOSING SCENES 427 

reknit his intimacy with Hillard, from whom slavery 
dissensions had parted him. Hillard had shown 
great tenderness toward him as he sailed for Europe, 
the previous year, and now, though stricken with 
paralysis, he welcomed Sumner to his home, and for 
the last time the two renewed many fond memories. 1 
Shortly before his return to Congress, Sumner did 
a public service in connection with the Virginim 
case. The seizure of this vessel while flying the 
American flag and the execution of a considerable 
number of the men who had been aboard her, aroused 
intense feeling, and a great public meeting was pro- 
jected in New York to voice the popular indignation 
against Spain. Sumner was invited to be one of the 
speakers, but instead of accepting he sent a letter in 
which he advised delay and calm investigation of the 



^ne incident of Sumner's last dinner with Hillard is of in- 
terest. ''The old cook had been a slave in Georgia, and was 
greatly excited over the preparations of a dinner for the man 
who was to her the deliverer of her race. Mr. Hillard told Mr. 
Sumner what a solemn occasion it was to her. Mr. Sumner 
said it was the custom in some places to send a glass of wine to 
t lie cook when the dinner was unusual!} 7 good, and begged per- 
mission to do so, which he did, rendering the old woman almost 
beside herself with pride. The servants had told me of bheir 
earnest desire to see the great man, and I asked Mr. Sumner if 
he could gratify them. He assented, simply and readily. I 
shall never forget how he looked as he stood in the doorway of 
the dining-room, almost filling it in height and breadth, while 
those two poor, homely black women, one of them scarred l>\ 
injuries received in slavery, reverently kissed his hand. It was 
a scene full of significance. We looked on with wet eyes ; but 
he was rather embarrassed, and glad to escape up-stairs. I also 
remember that the kitchen department was demoralized for 
some days following." Told by an eve- witness. Pierce, 
Vol. IV, p. 570. 



428 CHAELES SUMNER 

facts, deprecating the war spirit and preparations 
which the meeting bade fair to excite. In an inter- 
view in the Tribune he elaborated these views with 
very salutary effect. His efforts called forth most 
hearty approval from the judicious, and it was pres- 
ently shown that the facts of the case afforded not 
the slightest warrant for the furore into which hot- 
heads were striving to plunge the country. 

Despite his recent differences with the administra- 
tion and the censure of the Massachusetts legislature, 
Sumner found on all sides assurances of popular re- 
gard ; and he returned to Washington with the con- 
sciousness that at no period of his public service 
had the heart of Massachusetts been more with him. 
Nothing was more certain than that the censure 
would be speedily removed and that his reelection 
to the Senate in 1875 would be unchallenged. 

A cordial greeting awaited Sumner at the open- 
ing of Congress, but his assignment to a low place 
on two committees with which he had never been 
associated indicated that he was not considered a 
Republican. Senior senator in length of service, he 
seized the first opportunity to introduce a list of eight 
measures which he intended to urge. Foremost in 
his interests was the Civil Rights Bill introduced 
by him in 1870. Never vindictive, the policies he 
now advocated were those which he believed would 
soonest heal the breach. Even in the heat of the 
Grant campaign his counsel had been : " Nothing in 
haste. Nothing in vengeance. Nothing in passion. 
I am for gentleness. I am for a velvet glove ; but 



CLOSING SCENES 429 

for a while I wish the hand of iron." In urging his 
favorite measure in the Senate, he showed the same 
niagnanimit3 T . "Sir, my desire, the darling desire, 
if I may say so, of my soul, at this moment, is to 
close forever this question so that it shall never 
again intrude into these chambers — so that hereafter, 
in all our legislation, there shall be no such word as 
'black' or ' white,' but that we shall speak only of 
citizens and of men." He now desired that the bill 
should be acted upon directly by the Senate. Refer- 
ence to a committee was insisted upon, but the de- 
bate indicated that sentiment was more friendly 
than formerly both to Sumner and to his favorite 
measure. The report was not made until several 
weeks later ; with trifling changes the bill was then 
passed by the Senate by a party vote of twenty -niue 
to sixteen. It prohibited discriminations on account 
of race or color in inns, public conveyances, theatres, 
schools, cemeteries and juries. 1 

1 The House, however, did not act upon this measure and it 
was not till a year later (February, 1875) that a civil rights 
bill, originating in the House, and omitting the prohibitions as 
to schools — which Sumner would have considered fundamentally 
essential — and as to cemeteries, became a law. Eight years 
later the Supreme Court annulled this Act on the ground that 
the discriminations which it prohibited were not incidents or 
elements of slavery, and hence subject to the power of Conj 
under the Thirteenth Amendment, and that under the Four- 
teenth Amendment, while Congress might possibly legislate in 
correction of state laws held to infringe civil rights, it might not 
impose these prohibitions directly upon citizens of the individual 
states. Sumner's reply would have been his dictum, "Whatever 
is for human rights is constitutional." Fortunately time had 
already proved that the need for such drastic legislation was not 
so great as Sumner had believed. 



430 CHARLES SUMNER 

Sumner's devotion to this movement for the pro- 
tection of civil rights was the explanation of his 
supporting both by voice and vote the nomination 
of Caleb Cushing for Chief- Justice of the Supreme 
Court. Cushing's career and party allegiance had 
been marked by great inconsistency. Up to the 
actual outbreak of the war he had been a zealous 
j>artisan of the South, his indiscreet utterances and 
actions on several occasions having caused much 
annoyance to the Federal government. It had been 
his opposition more than that of any other one man 
which delayed for three months Sumner's first elec- 
tion to the Senate by the deadlock in the Massachu- 
setts legislature. Sumner, as he truly said of him- 
self, "did not cherish old differences and an irnosi- 
ties." Of late years Cushing had come into close 
sympathy with the government, and Sumner had 
greatly prized his genial and intelligent friendship ; 
so, in spite of the man's inconsistent record and the 
personal opposition which he had shown Sumner 
years before, when once the senator became con- 
vinced that dishing was now in sympathy with his 
own views on the Civil Rights Bill, against the 
urging of most of his Massachusetts advisers and 
friends, he warmly supported Cushing's nomination. 
The name was withdrawn, however, when it became 
known that even after Lincoln's inauguration, Cush- 
ing had been in friendly correspondence with Jeffer- 
son Davis. 

In February, 1874, Sumner was actively engaged 
upon the annotation of his Works, devoting especial 



CLOSING SCENES i.;i 

attention to his "Prophetic Voices Concerning Ainer 
ica, ,T which was to be given separate publication as 
appropriate to the centenary of American Independ- 
ence. In fact the very last measure which Sumner 
debated was the bill providing fur the Centennial 
Exposition at Philadelphia, lie was heartily in 
favor of a dignified national commemoration of the 
great anniversary, but earnestly opposed what be 
characterized as "the monstrosity of a world's fair 
linked with the commemoration of the national 
natal day." 

Early in 1874 the new Massachusetts legislature 
by large majorities rescinded and annulled the 
resolution of censure passed upon Sumner two years 
before for his "battle-flag 1 ' resolution. Whittier 
was jubilant, and proud that, like Benton in the 
case of the Senate's censure of Jackson, "solitary 
and alone I set the ball in motion." A colored 
friend of Sumner's, who had been on the committee 
which reported the rescinding resolution, was 
deputed to take it to Washington. ' It was promptly 
brought to the attention of the House, but in the 
Senate its presentation was delayed because of the 
illness of Sumner's colleague from Massachusetts. 

This act of justice was a great comfort to Sumner. 



1 Iu speaking of the sympathy and sensitiveness which under- 
lay Sumner's stately manner, N. P. Banks said that when these 
resolutions were presented to Sumner, " he received them with 
equanimity ; he spoke a few words of one or two gentlemen 
connected with the [Massachusetts] government, whom he 
knew, and then, overcome with emotion, wept as a child." 
Address before Mass. Senate, March 13, 1874. 



432 CHAELES SUMNEK 

He did not care to address the Senate upon it : 
"The dear old commonwealth has spoken for me, 
and that is enough." The joy that he had thus 
been vindicated came at a time when solace was 
sadly needed, for early in March he suffered severe 
pains in the heart and could find relief and sleep 
only by the use of opiates. On the 10th, against his 
physician's advice, he went to the Senate, for on that 
day Senator Boutwell was to leave his sick-room for 
the first time in order to present the rescinding 
resolution. There have been few occasions in his- 
tory on which a statesman has been thus formally 
tendered a signal act of reparation, and Sumner's 
colleagues were generous in their expressions of 
congratulation and good-will. It was a fitting close 
to a career which had often brought him into 
courageous conflict with popular sentiment. As 
Charles Sumner left the Senate chamber, that March 
afternoon, with the words of vindication from " the 
dear old commonwealth " still in his ears, friends 
noted with foreboding how haggard and ill he ap- 
peared. He was never to enter its doors again. 

That evening two old friends sat long with him 
at dinner. Hardly had they gone, when Sumner 
was prostrated by a severe attack of pain at the 
heart. It was soon seen that the final struggle was 
at hand. Physicians and friends did everything 
to alleviate his sufferings. Schurz and Hoar were 
constantly by his side. Two colored men, friends 
of many years, served him now with the devotion of 
their race. In his moments of consciousness he 



CLOSIJXIJ SCENES 433 

moaned, " My book, my unfinished book!'' Even 
more upon his mind in these last hours was the 
cause for which he had worked so hard ; again and 
again lie said to Judge Hoar: "You must take 
care of the Civil Eights Bill, — my bill, the Civil 
Eights Bill,— don't let it fail!" Almost his last 
message was : " Tell Emerson how much I love and 
revere him." Judge Hoar promised to do so, and 
added : "He said of you once that he never knew 
so white a soul." The words of that beautiful 
tribute were almost the last which fell upon the ear 
of the dying man. The end came in the middle of 
the afternoon, March 11th. As he laid down the 
hand he had been holding, Judge Hoar broke the 
silence: "Well done, good and faithful servant, 
enter thou into the joy of thy Lord ! " 

The announcement of Sumner's death came with 
a shock of surprise to the country, and "in many 
quiet homes, in many a cabin of the poor and lowly, 
there was inexpressible tenderness and profound 
sorrow." ! Both houses of Congress immediately 
adjourned. The following day, by their joint act ion 
the nation took the statesman's body into its keep- 
ing as a trust to be delivered to the commonwealth 
which he had so long served and so dearly loved. 
On a bleak March morning the funeral procession, 
led by a body of negroes headed by Frederick 
Douglass, made its way from Sumner's home to the 
Capitol. Here the body lay in state in the rotunda, 
and was viewed by thousands. The funeral service 
1 Judge E. R. Hoar, in the House of Representatives. 



434 CHARLES SUMNER 

was held in the Senate chamber, in the presence of 
the President and cabinet, and a great concourse of 
those among whom his life-work had been done. 
From Washington the body was borne with large 
escort to his native city, meeting upon its journey 
many evidences of the deep grief of the people. A 
throng of Sumner's townsmen awaited his last home- 
coming. In the rotunda of the State House Senator 
Anthony, addressing the governor, rendered back to 
Massachusetts her illustrious dead. Here all day 
Sunday, guarded by colored soldiers, the body lay, 
while sorrowing thousands filed past. It was signifi- 
cant that Hayti, by the hand of her minister, sent 
her tribute of affection and gratitude to the man 
who had championed her right to national recogni- 
tion, and who had later defended her menaced in- 
dependence. The funeral service was held in King's 
Chapel, and thence this son of Boston, once so 
maligned but now so universally mourned, was 
borne over the Harvard bridge which he had so 
often trod, past the halls of the college he loved, to 
Mt. Auburn, the resting-place of the noble friends 
of his youth and manhood. Sumner's was a lonely 
life and a lonely death : among all those sorrowing 
thousands from the Senate chamber in Washington 
to Mt. Auburn there was not one man of his own 
kin. But at his open grave stood the stricken Vice- 
President, his comrade in a quarter of a century of 
struggle, and Longfellow, Holmes, Whittier and Em- 
erson, whose friendship had been to him both solace 
and inspiration. 



CLOSING SCENES 435 

In death Sumner was accorded in full measure ap- 
preciation and praise which had been grudgingly 
given him in life. Preachers extolled his career and 
service, and the press teemed with kindly tributes. 
On the day set apart for his commemoration by 
Congress, nothing was more significant than t he 
evidence, not in fulsome and conventional eulogy 
but in words of genuine grief, that even long-time 
opponents had come to know the real character of 
the man. Not only was he recognized as " the 
chief inspiring cause and guiding spirit of the anti- 
slavery revolution," but, as Senator Sherman de- 
clared, now that strife and personal feeling inevitably 
aroused by the heat of recent contests in the Senate 
were passing away, "Charles Sumner was by the 
judgment of his associates here, by the confidence of 
his constituents, by the general voice of the people, 
the foremost man in the civil service of the United 
States." The commonwealth of Massachusetts and 
the city of Boston both honored their distinguished 
son, calling to their service the loving eloquence of 
George William Curtis and Carl Schurz. 

Two years before his death it is probable that no 
man, with the possible exception of Thaddeus 
Stevens, was so cordially hated throughout tin- 
South as was Charles Sumner. Yet the most sym- 
pathetically discerning characterization of this 
great "pioneer of agitation " came in tender words 
full of prophetic import from the lips of a Confed- 
erate soldier and statesman. Never had Lamar 
spoken " with a purpose more single to the interests 



436 CHARLES SUMNER 

of our Southern people" than when from his place 
in the House of Representatives he paid a tribute to 
Charles Sumner in words full of hopeful significance 
that the antagonisms aroused by slavery, and civil 
war, and reconstruction were swiftly passing away. 
Said he: "Charles Sumner was born with an in- 
stinctive love of freedom, and was educated from 
his earliest infancy to the belief that freedom is the 
natural and indefeasible right of every intelligent 
being having the outward form of man. . . . 
And along with this all-controlling love of freedom, 
he possessed a moral sensibility keenly intense and 
vivid, a conscientiousness which would never per- 
mit him to swerve by the breadth of a hair from 
what he pictured to himself as the path of duty. 
There were combined in him the characteristics 
which have in all ages given to religion her martyrs, 
to patriotism her self-sacrificing heroes. To a man 
thoroughly permeated and imbued with such a 
creed and animated and constantly actuated by such 
a spirit of devotion, to behold a human being or 
a race of human beings restrained of their natural 
rights to liberty, for no crime by him or them com- 
mitted, was to feel all the belligerent instincts of 
his nature roused to combat. The fact was to him 
a wrong which no logic could justify." Yet "in 
this fiery zeal and this earnest warfare against the 
wrong, as he viewed it, there entered no enduring 
personal animosity toward the men whose lot it was 
to be born to the system which he denounced." 
Lamar spoke with deep feeling of the kindness of 



CLOSING SCENES 437 

sympathy which, in his later years, Sumner had 
displayed toward the impoverished and suffering 
people of the South, and of the gracious magnanim- 
ity which had prompted his "battle-flag" resolu- 
tion. "Charles Sumner in life believed that all 
occasion for strife and distrust between the North 
and South had passed away, and there no longer re- 
mained any cause for continued estrangement be- 
tween these two sections of our common country. 
. . . Would that the spirit of the illustrious dead 
whom we lament to-day could speak from the grave 
to both parties to this deplorable discord in tones 
which should reach each and every heart through- 
out this broad territory, 'My countrymen, know one 
another and you will love one another.' " 



CHAPTER XX 



SUMNER'S LEADERSHIP 



Judicious historians of the United States in the 
second half of the nineteenth century have accorded 
to Sumner in the years immediately following the 
Civil War a position of power and influence second 
only to that of Grant. To the reader born since the 
war and unprepared by special study of that period, 
this judgment comes as a surprise. Sumner's figure 
looms larger on the historian's page than in the 
popular mind, where he has been crowded into the 
background by famous generals, or executives, or 
legislators whose names are directly associated with 
some great constructive act. ' 

*Not altogether without significance as corroborating this 
statement are certain Massachusetts college entrance examina- 
tion papers which have come under the writer's eye within the 
past few mouths. '' A brief account of the life and public serv- 
ices of Charles Sumner " was called for. Very few of the papers 
showed any accurate focussing upon the man ; the great majority 
indicated little more than that he was an anti-slavery orator, who 
was assaulted in the Senate. Among the answers were the fol- 
lowing : "Sumner was an Englishman who came to the Colonies 
before the Revolution. He helped by giving food and clothing 
and would not receive any pay. " " Sumner was always held in 
respect even by the people of the South. Fort Sumner, Charles- 
town, was named in his honor." Another goes more into detail : 
" When the Civil T\ T ar broke out he was in command at Fort 
Sumter. He held that fort as long as possible and then sailed 
to New York. He continued fighting for the North throughout 
the war and at its close he hoisted the flag which he was forced 



SUMNER'S LEADERSHIP 439 

The reasons are not far to seek. Sumner's great- 
est services, and those he was best fitted to perform, 
were rendered before and during the Civil War, and 
were in a way merged in its results. There was 
significance in his very name: its early English 
form was Summoner, — " the title of officers whose 
duty it was to summon parties into courts." ' Sum- 
ner's place in history is that of the Summouer of 
Slavery before the bar of the civilized world. The 
" Crime against Kansas" and " The Barbarism of 
Slavery " placed him in the front niok of the leaders 
of the rapidly approaching revolution. That he 
became a dominant factor in the attempted solution 
of the critical problems of reconstruction was due to 
a complex of causes, among which his arguments 
and eloquence were far from being the most impor- 
tant. 2 

Sumner was an idealist. He combined the un- 
to haul down by the Confederates over Fort Sumter. " A con- 
siderable number of other papers associated Sumner with Fort 
Sumter. Of course these papers were not of average intelli- 
gence. But that so large a proportion of this group of appli- 
cants for admission to a college in the commonwealth which 
Sumner served so long and with such distinction could Bhow 
such abysmal ignorance of the man and of his work at the end 
of a single generation from the time of his death, does seem to 
confirm the statement that Sumner's fame, as compared with 
that of less influential leaders of his time, has suffered some- 
thing of an eclipse. 

1 Pierce, Vol. I, p. 1. 

3 G. S. Boutwell suggests an interesting comparison between 
Sumner and Samuel Adams, each of whom showed more skill 
and intelligence in organizing the forces that brought on a 
olution than in reconstructing the government upon the basis of 
the new conditions that had been created by that revolution. 
—Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. II, p. 220, 



440 CHARLES SUMNER 

yielding conscience of the Puritan with the burning 
zeal of a Hebrew prophet. He showed himself a 
prophet many times in his prevision of changes in 
popular sentiment quite beyond the sight of the 
shrewd politician. And he was a prophet, too, like 
Amos of old, in his fearless showing forth of the 
evils of his day, and in preaching righteousness and 
a judgment to come. Now there are diversities of 
gifts. If all men were prophets, where were the 
making of laws or the administering of government ? 
Sumner, like all prophets, was by nature a doctri- 
naire. Even slavery, the sociologist makes clear, 
has not been everywhere and at all times an evil, and 
certainly in the United States in the fifties it was 
not everywhere so black as Sumner painted it. 
Nevertheless, the institution was utterly out of ac- 
cord with the spirit of the Republic and with the 
nineteenth century, and had become so fruitful of 
moral, economic and political abuses that the time 
was more than ripe for its being swept away. The 
issue had become primarily one of morals, and Sum- 
ner's mind and heart admirably fitted him for the 
task of setting forth the enormity of African slavery 
in America and of marshaling the North to resist 
its aggressions. Again, in the first years of the 
war, no one foresaw more clearly that emancipation 
was inevitable, and no other man did so effective 
work in preparing the public mind to accept and 
support that great act of justice. These were tasks 
congenial to an idealist, to a prophet. 
But the problems which presented themselves at 



SUMNER'S LEADEESHIP 111 

the end of the war were by no means simple moral 
issues, to be settled once and for all for the country 
by an idealist's appeal to his enlightened conscience. 

The reconstruction of a disordered commonwealth 
so that it may best accomplish the work of justice 

calls for talents of a different order from those 
needed for the destruction of an abuse. Sunnier 
had entered political life at the top, undisciplined 
by the struggles through which alone most men 
reach that eminence. He had had singularly little 
experience in the adaptation of Legislation to con- 
structive ends and none at all in the practical work 
of carrying laws into effect in government. Yet tin- 
war was hardly a year old when Sumner began to 
ponder over the status of the seceded states and the 
problem of their future. Forthwith he propound* *d 
his celebrated theory that these states had commit- 
ted suicide, and that upon the page wiped clean by 
their act of self-effacement Congress might write 
whatever it pleased as conditions precedent to the 
reincorporation of those communities in the Union. 
Sumner was not held in high regard by his associates 
in the Senate as an expounder of the Constitution, 1 



'With keen insight George William Curtis has pointed out 

that Sumner's attitude toward the Constitution in the days of 
the anti-slavery struggle had met a nerd of the limes : " He 
sometimes adopted propositions of constitutional or international 
law which led straight to his moral end, but which would hardly 
have endured the legal microscope. Yet he maintained them 
with such fervor of conviction, such an array of precedent, rach 
amplitude of illustration, that to the great popular mind, mor- 
ally exalted like his own. his statements had the majesty und 
conclusiveness of demonstrations " 



442 CHAKLES SUIVLNEK 

and this thesis commanded little attention at the 
time when it was first enunciated. Its logical in- 
consistencies were not far to seek, while the impolicy 
of adopting any such basis for reconstruction should 
have been apparent to a man who insisted as Sum 
ner did — for Dominicans — that government must 
be by consent of the governed. The Supreme Court 
later repudiated this state-suicide theory. Why, 
then, did Congress come to accept it as a basis for 
action ? Kot because it was converted by Sumner's 
faulty logic or forceful eloquence, but because it 
was confronted by a most tangled political condition. 
If Lincoln had lived to deal tactfully with a Con- 
gress whose confidence he possessed, to guide the 
freedmen who idolized him and would have heeded 
his counsel, and to conciliate the best public senti- 
ment among Southerners who were already coming 
to rely upon his justice, even then the problems of 
reconstruction must still have involved struggle and 
controversy; but it is not unreasonable to believe 
that their solution would have proved far more 
simple and enduring. If the Eepublican conveu- 

" And this, again, was what the time needed. The debate was 
essentially, although under the forms of laic, revolutionary. Jt 
aimed at the displacement not only of an administration, but of 
a theory of the government, and of traditional usage that did 
not mean to yield without a struggle. It required, therefore, 
not the judicially logical mind, nor the line touch of casuistry 
that splits, and halts, and defers until the cause is lost, hut the 
mind so ahsolutely alive with the idea and fixed upon the end 
that it compels the means. John I'yin was resolved that Straf 
ford should he impeached, and he found the law for it. Charles 
Sumner was resolved that slavery should fall, and he found the 
Constitution for it." — Eulogy on Sunnier, p. 154. 



SUMNER'S LEADERSHIP 448 

tion of 1864 had appreciated —what parly Leaders 
have not even yet Learned from bitter experience — 
that not only patriotism but shrewd politics as well 
demand the selection of a candidate for Vice-Presi- 
dent who in character and in executive efficiency is 
qualified for the presidential chair, Lincoln's la- 
mented death would not have brought farther dis- 
aster in the succession of a Johnson, with Ins genius 
for provoking dissension. Sumner in the Senate 
was inteut upon protecting the colored race in its 
newly-gained freedom ; Stevens in the House was 
resolved that the threatened defeat of the Kepubli- 
can party by Southern Democrats lately in rebellion 
should not be accomplished. And so these two men, 
antipathetic in almost everything but their hatred 
for slavery and all its works, found in the state- 
suicide theory a common basis for action and the 
logic of events presently brought Congress to follow 
in the way they were leading. 

Xegro suffrage was the other feature of recon- 
struction for which Sumner more than any other 
one man must bear the praise or blame. Almost 
alone in the Senate, in season and out of season, he 
urged that no distinction of race or of color must 
be drawn at the polls. And again, at Last, the 
idealist and the politician found common standing 
ground. Sumner, a devotee of the doctrine of civil 
equality, insisted that there was need of the negroerf 
ballots as of their muskets for the protection of 
their newly gained rights. Stevens boasted that the 
vote of every enfranchised black could be relied 



444 CHAKLES SUMNER 

upon to uphold the menaced rule of the Republican 
party. Doubtless the belief was widely held that 
the maintenance of that party in power, even by 
such means, was essential, if the results of the 
war were to be assured. Nevertheless, it was 
the politician's arguments which brought Con- 
gress to adopt the policy that was treated with 
derision when first urged upon the Senate by the 
idealist. 

In the days before Sumner came to consider him- 
self the Moses of the negro race, he had seen suffrage 
problems in a different light. In 1843 he declared : 
" Our institutions, more than those of any other 
land, stand on intelligence. I believe in the capacity 
of the people to govern themselves, but only when 
disciplined by education and elevated by moral 
truth." 1 A few years later, he raised with his 
brother the question : " May not France set the ex- 
ample of founding her republic on intelligence, by 
requiring that every voter shall read and write? " 2 
No man in Congress had a higher regard for the 
teachings of science than Sumner. Among his dear- 
est friends was a scientist of the first rank who had 
devoted much careful study to race problems, and 
whose sage conclusions as to the future of the negro 
in America could not have failed to impress Sum- 
ner, had he faced the question free from the preju- 
dices developed by years of controversy. As early 

1 Letter to Charlemagne Tower, Sept. 18. Pierce, Vol. II, p. 
272. 

2 April 4, 1848. Pierce, Vol. Ill, p. 37. 



SUMNEK'S LEADERSHIP 445 

as 1863, Louis Agassiz had written t<> Dr. Howe: 
"We should beware how we give to the bla 
rights, by virtue of whieli they may endanger the 
progress of the whites before their temper has been 
tested by a prolonged experience." He emphasize d 
the characteristics which ancient monuments pro ved 
had been from the dawn of history possessed by tin- 
negro race, and showed that while other races had 
founded empires and attained a high degree of civi- 
lization, " the negro race groped in barbarism and 
never originated a regular organization among them- 
selves." He therefore concludes: "I am not pre- 
pared to state what political privileges they are fit 
to enjoy now ; though I have no hesitation in say- 
ing that they should be equal to other men before 
the law. The right of owning property, of bearing 
witness, of entering into contracts, of buyiug and 
selling, of choosing their own domicile, would give 
them ample opportunity of showing in a compara- 
tively short time what political rights might prop- 
erly aud safely be granted to them in successive in- 
stalments. Xo man has a right to what he is unfit 
to use. Our own best rights have been acquired 
successively. I cannot, therefore, think it just or 
safe to grant at once to the negro all the privileges 
which we ourselves have acquired by long struggles. 
History teaches us what terrible reactions have 
followed too extensive and too rapid ehan. 
Let us beware of granting too much to the 
negro race in the beginning lest it become neces- 
sary hereafter to deprive them of some of the priv- 



446 CHAKLES SUMNEK 

i leges which they may use to their own and our det- 
riment." 1 

But at the time when the problem of reconstruc- 
tion had to be faced, Sumner had been denouncing 
slavery from the platform and in the Senate for 
twenty years. The term " slave- monger " had been 
so habitually upon his tongue that it had come in 
his thought to cover almost all Southern whites who 
had not at peril of their lives opposed secession. 
And so all the teachings of sociology as to the slow 
development of capacity for self-government he be- 
lieved outweighed by the need of protecting the 
freedmen from falling under the rule of " slave- 
mongers." As early as 1866 he was insisting that 
the freedmen must have the ballot " (1) for his own 
protection ; (2) for the protection of the white 
Unionist ; and (3) for the peace of the country/' 
Alas for the schemes of idealist and politician ! 
Neither Sumner nor Stevens had many months to 
live, but the grave had not closed upon either of 
them before it became evident that in the ballot was 
to be found protection neither for the freedman nor 
for the white Unionist, while to the peace of the 
country hardly anything could have been more 
destructive. The orgy of misrule under ignorant 

1 Life and Correspondence of Louis Agassiz, Vol. II, p. 605. 
Quoted by Rhodes, Vol. VI, pp. 37-38, who also quotes Col. T. 
W. Higginson as saying that when Agassiz heard from him how 
admirably the negro soldiers had behaved both in camp and un- 
der fire, he said : "Then they must vote of course. The man 
who risks his life for his country has the right to vote in it. 
There is no question about that." 



SUMNER'S LEADERSHIP 417 

blacks maiiipulated by unprincipled whites led the 
natural leaders of the South in self-defense t<> unite 
in a determined effort to put an end to such an in- 
tolerable state of government. 1 Unrestricted negro 
suffrage, imposed for the purpose of protecting the 
Republican party at a critical juncture, did more 
than anything else to create the "Solid South," 
and to make any normal party development in thai 
section impossible. Intelligent leaders of the negro 
race unhesitatingly declare that the indiscriminate 
gift of the ballot to the freedman was not even a 
doubtful boon ; they frankly avow that it distracted 
him from the normal line of development, and that 
his best interests would have been subserved by the 
imposition of fair educational or even property 
tests, which would have made the franchise the re- 
ward of striving. But, as Agassiz feared, the 
ballot, thus hastily given, was soon practically 
taken away by force, intimidation or fraud. In 
more recent years constitutional amendments have 

1 Experience soon proved that Governor Andrew had a far 
clearer insight into the problem of reconstruction than the men 
who determined its solution in Congress. " I am confident 
we cannot reorganize political society with any security : 
1. Unless we let in the people to a cooperation and not merely 
an arbitrarily selected portion of them. 2. Unless we give 
those who are, by their intelligence and character, the natural 
leaders of the people, and who surely will lead them by and 
by, an opportunity to lead them now." Valedictory address 
to the Massachusetts legislature, Jan. 4, 1866. Chandler's 
Memoir of Andrew, p. 251 et seq- Pearson's Life of Andrew, 
Vol. II, p. 276. Rhodes gives unstinted praise to Andrew's 
clear thought and magnanimous proposals, and thinks that his 
idea might have been realized, had it not been for the quarrel 
between the President and Congress. Vol. V, p. 607. 



448 CHARLES SUMNER 

been generally adopted in the South, which, while 
undoubtedly working injustice to many negroes at 
the time of their adoption, give promise of more 
substantial justice in the future. The tacit acquies- 
cence on the part of the country at large in this an- 
nulment of " equal suffrage" even by such crude 
and unfair devices as the " grandfather clauses '■' is 
significant of a vast change in public sentiment as to 
one of the cardinal features of the reconstruction 
policy which Sumner and Stevens brought Congress 
to adopt. At a conference upon education in the 
South in 1908, one of the most eminent educators in 
the country, himself a native of one of the border 
states, could command unhesitating assent in de- 
claring : " We all realize, whether we live north or 
south of Mason and Dixon's line, that the law which 
placed the unlimited franchise in the hands of the 
negro was one of the greatest political blunders of 
our history." l 

In dealing with the status of the seceded states 
and with the political rights of the negro, Sumner 
appears as an unpractical theorist, not free from 
prejudice. But his stand in these controversies of 
the closing years of his life should not be allowed to 
hide the real breadth and magnanimity of the man 
and the greatness of his service. Nor was Sumner 
so unpractical — in the narrow sense of the term — as 
is often implied. He was diligent in investigating 
important measures which did not fall within the 
range of his chief interest, and became a clear- 
1 Dr. Henry S. Pritchett, at Memphis, May 2, 1908. 



SUMNER'S LEADERSHIP 449 

headed and effective debater upon such practical 
questions as the tariff', the currency, postal regula- 
tions, and copyright. He was attentive to the 
wants of his constituents and efficient in his com- 
mittee work. He would have proved a highly 
serviceable senator in ordinary times, though it is 
doubtful whether a man of his type could have been 
elected to the Senate or would have accepted an 
election to the Senate, except in such a crisis as that 
of 1850. Then the call was for the prophet. 

For Sumner's great work was not the framing of 
laws ; it was rather the kindling of moral enthusi- 
asm, the inspiring of courage and hope, the assail- 
ing of public injustice. Sumner was emphatically 
" a pioneer of agitation.' ' His " True Grandeur of 
Nations," which first brought him fame threescore 
years ago, is still a grand arsenal of weapons against 
war. Even at that early day he showed himself an 
earnest and far-sighted leader in the movement for 
international arbitration. His was the first clear 
programme proposed in Congress for the reform of 
the civil service. It was his timely and much- 
needed protest that checked illegal measures and 
ill-advised projects aiming at tropical expansion. 
It was his dauntless courage in denouncing com- 
promise, in demanding the repeal of the Fugitive 
Slave Law, and in insisting upon emancipation that 
made him the chief initiating force in the struggle 
that put an end to slavery. It was he who urged 
the arming of the blacks. It was his courage and 
magnanimity that put a check upon barbarous at- 



450 CHAELES SUMNER 

tempts at retaliation, whether in the treatment of 
Confederate prisoners, in the grant of letters of 
marque and reprisal, or in the seizure of unoffend- 
ing citizens of foreign countries in return for wrongs 
inflicted upon Americans abroad. Finally, through- 
out the greatest crisis of our national history, it was 
the influence of Charles Sumner more than of any 
other one man that kept this country out of war 
with England and with France, when war witli 
either of them would have meant the overthrow of 
the Union. If these be not the works of practical 
statesmanship, where shall such be found ! 

But through all his public life he served not so 
much by what he said or did as by what he was. 
He could truly say of himself: "The slave of 
principles, I call no party master." His power lay 
in his insight into moral forces and his ability to 
convert to his opinion the great public, by whose 
pressure his colleagues were often reluctantly brought 
to follow his standard. For the arts of the ordinary 
party manager he had no aptitude and little regard. 
Not once but many times he boldly forced issues 
which filled the party leaders with dismay and 
threatened to disrupt the anti-slavery forces. 
Nevertheless, as Curtis said, "the rank and file of 
the party, to borrow a military phrase, dressed 
upon Sumner," and in the later years, when dis- 
sensions had arisen and he took a course which most 
of his former comrades would not approve, ' ' there 
were thousands and thousands of men who would be 
startled and confused to find themselves marching 



SUMNER'S LEADERSHIP 451 

in a political campaign out of step with Charles 
Sumner." l 

Sumner's service has been well appraised by the 
man upon whom rather than upon any other his 
mantle fell. George Frisbie Hoar, another great 
senator from Massachusetts, said of him : 

" Charles Sumner held a place in the public life 
of the country which no other man ever shared 
with him. . . . He was an idealist. He sub- 
jected every measure to the inexorable test of the 
moral law. Yet, at the same time, he was a power- 
ful political leader, and in a time when the fate of 
the Republic was decided accomplished vast practi- 
cal results. Where duty seemed to him to utter its 
high commands, he could see no obstacle in hostile 
majorities and no restraint in the lines of a written 
CoDStitution. It is right, therefore constitutional, 
was the logical formula with which he dealt with 
every question of state. We should be deaf and 
blind to all the lessons of history, if we were to de- 
clare it to be safe that men trusted with executive or 
even legislative power should act on that principle. 
Unfortunately, humanity is so constituted that the 
benevolent despot is likely to do more mischief 
even than a malevolent despot. His example of 
absolute disregard of constitutional restraints will 
be followed by men of very different motives. Yet 
the influence of one such man pressing and urging 
his companions forward in a legislative body like 
the Senate of the United States, keeping ever before 
the people the highest ideals, inspired by love of 
liberty, and ever speaking and working in the fear 
of God, is inestimable." 2 

1 Orations, Vol. Ill, pp. 231-232. 

8 Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. I, p. 214. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Bartol, C. A. Senatorial Character : a Sermon in West Church, 
Boston, after the Decease of Charles Sumner, 1874. 

Bolton, Mrs. S. E. Charles Sumner. (In her " Famous Amer- 
ican Statesmen.") 1888. 

Boston, Mass. City Council Memorial of Sumner, 1874. 

Chamberlain, D. H. Charles Sumner and the Treaty of Wash- 
ington, 1902. 

Chambrun, Marquis de. Personal Recollections of Charles 
Sumner. Scribner's Alagazine, February, 1 893, p. 153. 

Chaplin, J. and Mrs. J. (Dunbar.) Life of Charles Sumner. 
Introduction by W. Claflin, 1874. 

Clarke, J. F. Charles Sumner. (In his " Memorial and Bi- 
ographical Sketches.") 1878. 

Curtis, G. W. Charles Sumner : a Eulogy. Orations and Ad- 
dresses, 1894. Vol. III. Same, in Massachusetts General 
Court Memorial. 

Davis, J. C. B. Mr. Sumner, the Alabama Claims and their Set- 
tlement. (Letter to N. Y. Herald.) 1878. 

Dawes, Anna L. Charles Sumner. New York, 1892. 

Elliott, R. B. Oration delivered April 14, 1874. In Massachu- 
setts General Court Memorial. 

Grimke, A. H. Life of Charles Sumner, the Scholar in Politics, 
1892. 

Harris, A. B. Charles Sumner's Autographs. N. Y. Evening 
Post, July 17, 1875. 

Charles Sumner's Library. N. Y. Evening Post, June 11, 

1875. 



The Sumner Missals. N. Y. Evening Post, January 22, 

1876. 

Higginson, T. W. Contemporaries, 1899. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 453 

Hoar, G. F. Sumner. North American Review, 1 878. Vol. 
CXXVI, p. 1. 

Sumner. Forum. Vol. XVI, p. 549. 

Johnson, A. B. Cosmopolitan Magazine, Vol. Ill, p. 406; Vol. 
IV, pp. 40, 142. 

Recollections of Charles Sumner. Scridner's Monthly, 

August-October, 1887. Vol. VIII, pp. 475-490; Vol. IX, 
pp. 101-114; Vol. X, pp. 224-229, 297-304. 

Lester, C. E. Life and Public Services of Charles Sumner, 1874. 

Magoun, G. F. Charles Sumner. (In his "Atlas Essays.") 1877. 

Massachusetts General Court. A Memorial of Charles Sum- 
ner. ( Including Commemorative Observances, June 9, 
1874; Poem by J. G. Whittier; Eulogy by G. W. Curtis; 
Eulogy by Carl Schurz, April 29, 1874; Oration by R. B. 
Elliott, April 14, 1874; Sermon by H. W. Foote, March 22, 
1874.) 

Nason, Elias. The Life and Times of Charles Sumner, 1874. 

Pierce, Edward L. Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner. 
Four volumes, 1877-1893. 

The Completion of the Sumner Memoir. (In his " En- 
franchisement and Citizenship.") 1896. 

Schurz, Carl. Sumner. Eulogy delivered before the City Gov- 
ernment of Boston, April 29, 1874. Massachusetts General 
Court Memorial. 

Stearns, F. P. Cambridge Sketches, 1905. 

Storey, Moorfield. Charles Sumner. (American Statesman 
Series.) 1900. 

Sumner, Charles. Works. Fifteen volumes, 1870- 1883. 

U. S. Congress. Memorial Addresses on the Life and Character 
of Charles Sumner, April 27, 1874. 

Whipple, E. P. Recollections of Charles Sumner. (In his 
" Recollections of Eminent Men.") 1887. 

Wright, J. J. In Memoriam : Charles Sumner. Eulogies deliv- 
ered by J. J. Wright, R. B. Elliott, and T. II. Jackson, 
March 17, 1874, in Columbia, S. C. 



INDEX 



Abolitionists, Sumner's atti- 
tude toward, 103. 

Adams, Charles Francis, editor 
of Daily Whig, 104; opposes 
coalition, 116, 125; on Sum- 
ner's candidacy for Senate, 
129; opposes revised consti- 
tution, 164; on Know-Noth- 
ings, 182; inclined toward 
compromise, 240 ; on Sum- 
ner's " national claims," 340, 
378, n. 1. 

Adams, Charles Francis, Jr., 
134. 341, n. ; 363, n. 3; 371, 
n. I. 

Adams, John Q., commends 
Sumner's words on slavery 
and war, 95 ; on emancipa- 
tion, 249; no, 113, 119. 

Adams, Samuel, Sumner com- 
pared with, 439, n. 2. 

" Admiralty Practice," Dun- 
lap's, Sumner edits, 43. 

Agassiz, Louis, declines position 
on San Domingo Commis- 
sion, 361, n. I ; opinion as to 
negro suffrage, 445. 

Alabama and the Alabama 
claims, 273, 338. 

Alaska, Sumner's part in the 
accession of, 318-319; com- 
pared in value with San Do- 
mingo, 373. n - l. 

Allen, Charles, leader of Young 
Whigs, no; at Philadelphia 
convention, 116. 

Allston, Washington, 64, 94. 

American Antiquarian Society, 



Sumner elected a member of, 
72. 
American Jurist, Sumner con- 
tributor to, 37, 42 ; editor of, 

43- 

Amnesty Bill, 412, 413. 

Andrew, John A., 41, 182, 184 ; 
views on negro suffrage and 
reconstruction, 447, n. 1. 

Annexation of territory, Sum- 
ner's attitude toward, Alaska, 
318-319; St. Thomas, 319; 
Canada, 363-364. See San 
Domingo. 

Appleton, Nathan, on nomina- 
tion of Taylor, 117, n. I. 

Arbitration, Sumner's early ad- 
vocacy of international, 95- 
96. 

Argyll, Duke and Duchess of, 
230, 271, 292. 

Arkansas, reconstruction begun 
in, 284 ; opposition to recog- 
nition of, 286. 

Art, Sumner's interest in, 50 ; 
collections of, 404 ; appre- 
ciation of, 407-408. 

Atchison, David R., leader of 
" border ruffians," 189, 194. 

Atkinson, Edward, 331, n. 1. 

Autographs, Sumner's collec- 
tion of, 404. 



Babcock, O. E., negotiates 
" protocol " with San Do- 
mingo, 343 ; concludes treaty, 
344, 348. 



INDEX 



455 



Badger, G. E., abuse of Sum- 
ner, 156. 

Balch, F. V., 393, 399. 

Ballot, secret, in Massachusetts 
legislature, 133-134- 

Baltimore, Sumner hunted by 
mob in, 245. 

Bancroft, Frederic, Life of 
Seward, 138, n. I, passim. 

Bancroft, George, 64 ; Sumner 
criticizes eulogy of Lincoln, 
89, n. 1 ; author of Johnson's 
first message, 302 ; corre- 
spondence with Sumner con- 
cerning Hawthorne's appoint- 
ment, 400-402. 

Banks, N. P., 130; elected 
speaker, 188; 284, 431, n. 1. 

Battle-Flag Resolution, 262, 
423 ; censure by Massachu- 
setts legislature, 424 ; effort 
to rescind, 424-425 ; re- 
scinded, 431-432 ; Lamar on, 

437- 

Benton, Thomas H., pessimistic 
as to politics in 1850, 139. 

Bird, F. W., 331, n. I; 371, 
n. 1. 

Blaine, James G., on Sumner's 
removal from chairmanship, 
366, n. 1. 

Blair, Montgomery, on Trent 
Affair, 252. 

Boston, in Sumner's boyhood, 
22 ; press comments on Sum- 
ner's election, 135, n. 2; 179, 
250 ; City Council endorses 
Crittenden Compromise, 242- 

243- 

Boutwell, George S., elected 
governor of Massachusetts, 
130 ; on negro suffrage, 298 ; 
presents rescinding resolu- 
tion, 432 ; 336, 358, n. I ; 
414, n. 1 ; 439, n. 2. 



Bright, Jesse D., on exclusion 
of Sumner from committees, 
165 ; reports committee li>t, 
244 ; Sumner's speech for 
expulsion of, 387. 

Bright, John, on Trent Af- 
fair, 254, 271 ; on Sumner's 
" national claims," 340; 221, 
222, 422. 

Brook Farm, Sumner's attitude 
toward, 75. 

Brooks, Preston S., 202 ; as- 
saults Sumner, 204 ; debate 
over, 205-209 ; trial of, 210 ; 
resignation, 211; reelection, 
212, and n. 1 ; Southern 
sentiment toward, 212; North- 
ern feeling, 213; death of, 
219 ; Sumner's feeling to- 
ward, 220. 

Brougham, Lord, 54 ; approves 
Sumner's attitude on bound- 
ary controversy, 59 ; 221. 

Brown, John, 217, n. 2. 

Brown-Sequard, Dr. C. E., on 
Sumner's case, 224 ; applies 
moxa, 225. 

Burns, Anthony, attempted res- 
cue of, 173-174. 

Butler, A. P., 140, 171 ; abuse 
of Sumner, 183 ; Sumner 
rebukes, 195-197 ; connec- 
tion with Brooks, and the 
assault, 202, 20S ; 219. 

Butler, B. F., Sumner opposes 
nomination of, 383. 



Calhoun, John C, Sumner's 
impression of, 40 ; 139. 

Cameron, Simon, 366, 367, n. 2. 

Canada, proposed annexation 
of, 341-342; opposed by Ca- 
nadians, 355; Sumner favors 
annexation of, 363. 



456 



INDEX 



Capitol, paintings in, 262; 
sculpture for, 407, n. I. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 54. 

Cass, Lewis, minister to France, 
58 ; presents Sumner in Sen- 
ate, 138 ; 209. 

Cavour, Sumner's meeting, 228. 

Centralization, Sumner indiffer- 
ent as to, 320. 

Chamberlain, D. H., on Sum- 
ner's removal from chairman- 
ship, 371, n. 1. 

Channing, W. E., influence on 
Sumner, 43, 399 ; Sumner's 
" idol," 65 ; with Sumner 
condemns Webster's Creole 
letter, 102. 

Chase, Salmon P., congratulates 
Sumner on election, 135, n. 
2 ; on compact theory of gov- 
ernment, 157; issues "Ap- 
peal of Independent Demo- 
crats," 167 ; urged by Sum- 
ner for Chief- Justiceship, 281 ; 

139, I53» n - "» l S%> l6 5» 
177, 183,243, 266, 268; 295. 

Chestnut, James, abuse of Sum- 
ner, 235. 

Chinese, Sumner's attitude to- 
ward, 381. 

Cincinnati, Society of, Sumner 
member of, 72. 

Civil Rights Bill, 412, 422, 
428, 429. and n. I ; 433. 

Civil Service, Sumner initiates 
movement for reform of, 244, 
279. 

Clarke, J. F., 217, n. 2; 425. 

Clay, Henry, Sumner's im- 
pression of, 39 ; last day of, 
in Senate, 139. 

Clemens, J., abuse of Sumner, 
156. 

Clergy, petition of New Eng- 
land, 170, 172. 



Cleveland, H. R., 44, 45. 

Clingman, T. L., 207, 210. 

Coalition in Massachusetts, sug- 
gested, 119; urged by Wil- 
son, 125 ; results in Sumner's 
election to Senate, 126-134. 

Cobden, Richard, 221 ; on Trent 
Affair, 254 ; on blockade, 
271; 255, n. 1; 338. 

Codification of law, 61 ; of 
United States Public Statutes, 
144, 311. 

Committee Service, Sumner's, 
Roads and Canals, 140 ; ex- 
cluded from, 165, 188; on 
Territories, 218; on Foreign 
Relations, 244 ; on Slavery 
and Freedmen, 276 ; on Dis- 
trict of Columbia, 308, 422. 
See Foreign Relations. 

Compromise of 1850, 121 ; 
Sumner attacks finality of, 

149, 159- 

Confiscation, estates of Confed- 
erates, 267. 

" Congress of the Nations," 
Sumner advocates, 95. 

Conkling, Roscoe, 365. 

Conscience, public, need of 
support of, for laws, 154. 

« Conscience Whigs," 99, 109. 

Constitution (Massachusetts), 
revised, 161 ; defeated, 163. 

Constitution (United States), 
Sumner's attitude toward, 
102, 128, 132; guarantees of 
freedom, 150; Sumner's in- 
terpretation of, 152, 178,328, 
381, 441, n. 1; compact 
theory of, 153, n. I ; and the 
Fugitive Slave Law, 155. 

Cooper Institute speech, 236, 

2 73- 
Copyright, Sumner favors inter- 
national, 31 1. 



INDEX 



457 



Crawford, Thomas, Sumner's 
friendship for, 60, 71, 221, 
228. 

Creole Case, 10 1- 102. 

Crittenden, J. J., tries to shield 
Sumner, 205 ; compromise 
proposals, 239; 231, 248, n. 1. 

Cubans, belligerency of, 341- 

342. 
Curtis, George William, 67, n. 
I ; 109, n. I ; 220, 360, 389, 
394, 411, n. 1; 419, n. 2; 

435. 45°- , , 
Cushing, Caleb, opposes Sum- 
ner's election, 131 ; his 
" ukase," 163 ; favored by 
Sumner for Chief-J ustice, 430 ; 
345» 405- 



Daily Whig, established, 103. 

Dana, R. H., Jr., 124, 125,217. 

Davis, H. W., 268. 

Davis, Jefferson, 140 ; on 
Brooks assault, 213 ; 233, 309. 

Davis, Mrs. Jefferson, impres- 
sion of Sumner, 385. 

Davis, John, on slavery's influ- 
ence on public life, 139. 

Deadlock in Massachusetts 
legislature, 1 31- 134. 

Dewitt, D. M., " Impeachment 
and Trial of Andrew John- 
son," 324, n. I. 

Douglas, Stephen A., upholds 
Fugitive Slave Law, 157; 
presents report on Nebraska, 
166, 168, 169, 171 ; abuse of 
Sumner, 191 ; Sumner re- 
bukes, 195 ; colloquy with 
Sumner, 199-200; on Brooks 
assault, 205 ; 231, 232, 234. 

Douglass, F., 433. 

Drayton and Sayres, pardoned 
at Sumner's request, 143. 



Dred Scott Decision, 219, 231, 

282. 
Dunning, W. A., 302, n. I and 

2; 358, n. I. 

Edmundson, H. A., 203, 204 ; 
censure of, recommended, 
207 ; censure and resigna- 
tion, 211 ; reelection, 212. 

Education, Sumner cooperates 
with Mann for improvement 
of public, 75 ; urges free 
schools for freedmen, 316— 

3*7- 

Eliot, S. A., 98 ; succeeds \\ in- 

throp in Congress, 123; de- 
nounces Kansas-Nebraska 
Bill, 170. 

Emancipation, Sumner urges, 
on Lincoln, 248, 258-259; 
issue in Massachusetts Re- 
publican Convention, 249 ; 
press comments on proposal, 
250. 

Emerson, R. W., part in or- 
ganization of Republican 
party in Massachusetts, 181 ; 
opinion of Sumner, 433. 

Emigrant Aid Co., 189, 191,192; 
defended by Sumner, 194. 

England, Sumner's first visit to, 

5 1 - 

Engravings, Sumner's interest 

in, 223, 229, 382, 404. 

Equality of race, Charles Pinck- 
ney Sumner's attitude toward, 
18, 21 ; Sumner's, 101, 261, 
277, 288, 317, 422. 

Europe, Sumner's hrst trip to, 
45-63; last visit to, 420-422. 

Everett, Edward, election to 
Senate, 161 ; opposes com- 
mittee recognition of Sum- 
ner, 165; on Kansas-Ne- 
braska Bill, 167; presents 



458 



INDEX 



petition of New England 
clergy, 171; resigns, 172; 
urges Sumner to vote for 
Crittenden Compromise, 242. 

Faneuil Hall, banquet fol- 
lowing Sumner's oration, 87- 
88. 

Felton, Charles C, 44, 123. 

Fenianism, 320, 363, and n. 2 ; 

377- 

Fessenden, W. P., 175 ; chair- 
man Committee on Recon- 
struction, 302 ; rebukes Sum- 
ner, 307 ; opposes Alaska 
purchase, 319, 393. 

Fifteenth Amendment, 328. 

Filibuster, 172, 277, 288. 

Fillmore, Millard, condemned 
by Sumner, 128, 143, 388, 
and n. 2. 

Fish, Hamilton, enters Senate 
with Sumner, 142 ; votes 
against repeal of Fugitive 
Slave Law, 157, 180, 222, 
331 ; appointed Secretary of 
State, 333-335; attitude 
changing toward Sumner, 
355, n. 1 ; on terms of agree- 
ment with England, 355 ; in- 
sult to Sumner in Motley 
papers, 361. 

Fish, Mrs. Hamilton, 142 ; ap- 
proves Sumner's speech, 157. 

" Five of Clubs," 44, 65. 

Flack, H. E., 308, n. I ; 412, 
n. 1. 

Forbes, J. M., 243, n. I; 255, 
n. I ; opinion of Seward, 419, 
n. 2. 

Foreign Relations, Committee 
on, Seward keeps Sumner 
off, 218; Sumner assigned 
to, 231 ; chairman of, 
244 ; holds up Retaliation 



Bill, 310; reorganization pro- 
posed, 358, 360 ; Sumner's 
removal from chairmanship, 

365-37 1 - 

Fourteenth Amendment, de- 
bated in Senate, 306; causes 
and motives leading to, 306, 
n. 2 ; 308 ; " an instalment, 
not a finality," 314; rejected 
by Southern states, 314. 

Fourth of July Oration, 78-89. 

France, sale of arms to, 413- 
414. 

Freedmen's Bureau, 277. 

" Freedom national, Slavery 
sectional," 148-156. 

Free Soil Party, organized in 
Massachusetts, 11 6- 118. 

French, Sumner's mastery of, 
46-48. 

French Spoliation Claims, 279. 

Fugitive Slave Law, 123; Sum- 
ner's denunciation of, 128; 
Sumner moves resolution for 
its repeal, 146 ; addresses 
Senate on, 148-156; Boston 
petition for repeal, 174; 
Sumner on enforcement, 177, 
179 ; votes on repeal of, 179, 
184 ; repealed, 276-277. 



Gambetta, Leon, 421. 

Garfield, J. A., favors negro 
suffrage, 298. 

Garrison, W. L., censures Sum- 
ner's delay, 145 ; on John- 
son's impeachment, 323, n. 1 ; 
opposes rescinding censure of 
Sumner, 425. 

Georgia, reconstruction in, 380. 

Giddings, J. R., 113, 210, 216. 

Gladstone, W. E., 221, 222, 
230, 272, 273. 

Godkin, E. L., 371, n. 1 ; 410. 



INDEX 



459 



" Grandeur of Nations, The 
True," 78-89, 246. 

Grant, Ulysses S., report on 
Southern states, 303-304 ; 
nominated for President, 329- 
330; approves Sumner's at- 
titude on Johnson-Clarendon 
Convention, 339 ; on British 
breach of neutrality, 341 ; 
desire to recognize Cuban in- 
surgents, 341 ; calls on Sum- 
ner to urge support of San 
Domingo treaties, 349 ; praise 
of San Domingo, 356-357 ; 
attitude toward Sumner, 358, 
n. I ; denounced by Sumner, 
373 » candidate for reelection, 
414; "Republicanism vs. 
Giantism," 417. 

Greeley, Horace, 188, 239, 
298 ; leader of Liberal Re- 
publicans, 415 ; presidential 
candidate, 419, n. 2 ; defeat 
and death, 422. 

Greene, G. W., 60, 62. 

Greenleaf, Simon, professor in 
law school, 35. 

Greenough, H., Sumner's cor- 
respondence with, 407, and 
n. 1. 

Grey, Lord de, 377. 

Grimes, J. W., 266. 

Guizot, Henri, 221. 

Hale, Edward Everett, rec- 
ollections of Sumner, 94. 

Hale, John P., 119, 139, 157, 159. 

Harvard College, Sumner stu- 
dent in, 26-28 ; law school, 
34-37 ; cost of, compared 
with that of Ohio, %i ; Phi 
Beta Kappa oration, 93 ; 
Sumner's bequest of peace 
prize to, 96 ; other bequests 
to, 404. 



Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 64, 228 ; 
Sumner secures office for, 
400-401. 

Hayti, Sumner secures diplo- 
matic recognition of, 260 ; 
tribute to Sumner, 434; Sum- 
ner defends independence of, 

35 2 - 
Higginson, Thos. W., tries to 

free Burns, 173; 384, 399, 

n. 2. 
Hillard, George S., forms law 

partnership with Sumner, 41 ; 

44, 98, 169, 427. 
Hoar, E. Rockwood, 332, 359, 

376 ; at Sumner's death-bed, 

43 2 -433- 
Hoar, George F., 116, 117, 

3*7. 359,392,45i- 

Hoar, Samuel, 176, 180. 

Homesteads for freedmen, 
urged by Sumner, 317. 

Hooper, Samuel, 402, 403. 

Houston, General Samuel, de- 
fends New England clergy, 
171. 

Howe, Julia Ward, 406 ; op- 
poses rescinding of censure 
on Sumner, 425. 

Howe, Samuel Gridley, 8, 65 ; 
Sumner meets, in nativist 
riot, 71 ; Sumner's illness, 
72; interested with Sumner 
in phrenology, 74 ; urges 
Sumner into Prison Disci- 
pline controversy, 97; III, 
124, 138; criticizes Sumner's 
speech on Kossuth, 143 ; 
Sumner urges appointment to 
foreign courts, 245, 337 j 
commissioner to San Do- 
mingo, 361 ; favors annex- 
ation of San Domingo, 373, 
n. I. 

Humboldt, Alex, von, 226. 



460 



INDEX 



Impeachment of Johnson, 
Sumner's language before, 
313; trial of, 322-326. 

Irish in Massachusetts politics, 
163, 181. 

Italy, Sumner's first visit to, 59. 

Jackson, Andrew, on slavery 
and disunion, 242. 

Jacob, David, Sr., 22. 

Jeffrey, Lord, 55. 

Johnson, Andrew, Sumner's 
early impressions of, 295 ; 
proposed qualified negro suf- 
frage, 300 ; first message of, 
302 ; vetoes overridden, 305 ; 
" swings 'round the circle," 
312; denounced by Sumner, 
313; impeachment of, 322- 
326. 

Johnson, Arnold B., 8, 217, n. 2. 

Johnson, Reverdy, 282, n. I ; 
negotiates Johnson-Claren- 
don Convention, 335-336. 

Johnson-Clarendon Convention, 
336 ; debated and rejected, 

337-338, 345» 377- 
Joint High Commission, 365, 

376, 377- 
Jury, trial by, guaranteed by 
Constitution, 153. 

Kansas, civil war in, 189-190, 
192; debate over admission 
of, 233. 

Kansas-Nebraska Bill, de- 
nounced by Sumner, 168; by 
Massachusetts town-meetings, 
170 ; a " swindle," 194. 

Keitt, L. M., and the Brooks 
assault, 205 ; censure recom- 
mended and passed, 207, 21 1 ; 
reelected, 212; eulogy of 
Brooks, 219 ; death, 220. 



Kemble, Mrs. Frances A., 64, 

65, 71. 

Kent, Chancellor, 38-39. 
Know-Nothing movement, 181- 

. 133. 

Kossuth, Sumner on welcome 
to, 142. 

Lafayette, Sumner's oration 

on, 237. 
Lamar, L. Q. C, eulogy on 

Sumner, 43 6 ~437- 
Land-grants to Iowa, favored 

by Sumner, 143. 
Lawrence, looting of, 190 ; 192- 

193- 

Lawyers, Sumner on French, 
50 ; on English, 52. 

Law School, Harvard, Sumner 
student in, 34-37 ; declines 
instructorship in, 41 ; lecturer 
in, 42, 69 ; Story's wish that 
Sumner succeed him, 51, 
n. 1 ; Sumner not in favor 
at, 91. 

Lecompton Constitution, 223. 

Legal tender notes, Sumner on 
issue of, 327. 

Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, 
214. 

Liberator, first paper subscribed 
for by Sumner, 100, 145. 

Liberal Republicans, 415-417, 
420. 

Lieber, Francis, Sumner's cor- 
respondence with, 43, 68, 
100 ; on Sumner's resolutions 
on foreign intervention, 270. 

Lincoln, Abraham, nominated, 
232 ; Sumner supports, 237 ; 
on Republican party, 243 ; 
on Trent Affair, 253-254; 
on opposition to Seward, 266 ; 
renomination not favored by 
Sumner, 280-281 ; 289 ; last 



INDEX 



461 



speech, 293 ; death, 294 ; 

Sumner's eulogy of, 294, 390. 
Lincoln, Mrs. Abraham, 289, 

290, 3S0. 
Lincoln, Robert T., 294. 
Longfellow, Henry \V., 44, 45, 

62, 102, 108, n. I; 118, 134, 

138, 391. 

Louis Philippe, Sumner's esti- 
mate of, 48-49. 

Louisiana, reconstruction be- 
gun, 284 ; debate over recog- 
nition of, 287. 

Lowell, James Russell, opinion 
of Sumner's oration on war, 
87, n. I ; comment of John- 
son-Clarendon Convention 
speech, 339, n. I ; 358, n. I. 

Lyceum, in New England, 92 ; 
color line in, 101. 



Macaulay, Thomas B., 55. 
Mackenzie, A. S., Sumner's de- 
fense of, 73. 
" Maine Law," complicates 

Massachusetts politics, 160, 

163. 
Mann, Horace, 41 ; Sumner's 

coSperation with, 75, 126, 

158, 185. 
Marque and reprisal, letters 

of, Sumner's opposition to, 

268. 
Marshall, Chief- Justice John, as 

table companion, 39. 
Marshfield, elects Sumner to 

constitutional convention, 

161. 
Mason, J. M., 140 ; opposes 

Sumner's addressing Senate, 

*47 > ! 75 > Sumner rebukes, 

177, 198, 200 ; seized on 

Trent, 251. 
Massachusetts Historical So- 



ciety, Sumner's election to 
426. 

Memorandum, Sumner's 
"hemispheric flag-with- 
drawal," 363, 368. 

Metric system, favored by Sum- 
ner, 311. 

Metternich, Prince, comments 
on America, 61. 

Mexican War Bill, 104- 107 ; 
Sumner denounces, 1 12. 

Mexico, French intervention in, 
267. 

Military governors, appoint- 
ment of, 284. 

Mississippi, refuses to ratify 
Amendment XIII, 299. 

Montana, question of admission, 
278. 

Montezuma, as ancestor of 
Americans, 49. 

Morley, John, 379, n. 1. 

Morpeth, Lord, 53. 

Morton, O. P., 359, 361, 364. 

Motley, John Lothrop, 228, 
230, 331 ; appointed Minister 
to England, 336 ; instruc- 
tions to, 344-346 ; dis- 
regard of instructions, 347, 
and n. I ; resignation called 
for > 353 ; removal of, 357. 



" Naboth's Vineyard," 360. 

Napoleon III, 229, 382. 

" Nasby, Petroleum V.," Sum- 
ner's initiation by Lincoln, 
291. 

Nast, Thomas, caricatures of 
Sumner, 389. 

National claims, put forward 
by Sumner, 338 ; urged by 
Grant, 346. 

Naturalization, changes in, urged 
by Sumner, 381. 



462 



INDEX 



Nebraska, report on, 1 66; ne- 
gro suffrage imposed in, 309. 

Negro suffrage, 278, 295-296 ; 
Sumner's persistent urging 
of, 298; in Fourteenth 
Amendment, 306, and n. 2; 
308; in Colorado and Ne- 
braska, 308 ; in District of 
Columbia, 313, and n. 2 ; in 
territories, 314; made condi- 
tion of reconstruction, 316; 
Sumner's championship of, 

443-448. 

Negroes, in Europe, 230 ; en- 
listment of, in United States 
army, 267. 

Neutrality, Sumner on British 
breach of, 271-274, 309-31 1, 

413- 
New York Historical Society, 

72. 

Northcote, Sir Stafford, 377. 
Northeastern Boundary, Sum- 
ner's letter on, 58. 

Oath of office, 178; "iron- 
clad oath," 276. 

Ohio, cost of, compared with 
that of Harvard College, 8^. 

Oratory, Sumner's, 385-388. 

Ostracism, of Sumner in Boston, 
98, 108; of anti-slavery lead- 
ers, 124; by Southern sena- 
tors, suggested, 156, 178. 

Palfrey, J. G., 87 ; refuses to 
vote for Winthrop, 113; 125 ; 
opposes Sumner's election, 
131 ; opposes revised consti- 
tution, 164; 182; appointed 
postmaster of Boston, 245. 

Palmerston, Lord, on Trent Af- 
fair, 255, n. 1. 

Pans, Sumner in, 47-50, 58. 

Parker, Theodore, 124; greet- 



ing on Sumner's election, 
136; 147, 192, 201, 229, 238. 

Party, Sumner's attitude toward, 
148, 186, 236. 

Peace Conference, Sumner op- 
poses Massachusetts being 
represented at, 241. 

Peace Prize, Sumner's gift to 
Harvard College, 96. 

Peace Society, Sumner's rela- 
tion to American, 95. 

Petition, freedom of, cham- 
pioned by Sumner, 178. 

Pettit, John, abuse of Sumner, 

J7 1 . 175- 

Phi Beta Kappa Oration, 93. 

Philadelphia Exposition, Sum- 
ner on, 431. 

Phillips friction match case, 67. 

Phillips, Wendell, schoolmate 
of Sumner, 34; 87, n. I ; as- 
serts right of secession, 239 ; 
426. 

Phrenology, interest in, 74. 

Pierce, Edward L., " Memoir 
and Letters of Charles Sum- 
ner," 7; 136, n. 1 ; 147, 
n. 1 ; 262, 264, 323, n. 
1 ; 371, n. 1. 

Politics, Sumner's disgust with, 
as a career, 40-41, 76. 

Postal reform, urged by Sumner, 

144. 3 8 °- 

Prescott, William H., 64, 108, 
n. 1; 123, 169. 

Prison discipline, controversy 
over, 96-98. 

Pritchett, Henry S., on negro 
suffrage, 448. 

Public credit, Sumner in de- 
fense of, 327, 379. 

Railway, first ride upon, 38. 
Reconstruction, Sumner's the- 
ory of, 262, 283, 285, 441- 



LNDKX 



1.; ; 



442; Lincoln's plan of, 284; 
opposition in Congress, 285 ; 
Sumner insists on congres- 
sional initiative, 286 ; John- 
son's first steps in, 297 ; 
Sumner demands equal civil 
rights, 301 ; Johnson's plan, 
303; "Thorough," 315; 
negro suffrage as condition 
of, 316; Sumner's influence 
on, 441-448. 

Religion, Sumner's views on, 
398-399 ; in relation to the 
state, 421. 

Representatives, in Massachu- 
setts legislature, 126; in- 
structed to vote for Sumner, 
133; 161-162. 

Republican party, Sumner's 
part in beginnings of, 180, 
182. 

Retaliation, act, 282-283 ; pro- 
posed against England, 320 ; 
for arrest of American citi- 
zens, 321. 

Rhodes, James Ford, quoted, 
340, n. I ; 371, n. I ; 446, 
n. I ; 447, n. I. 

Ristori, Madame, 221. 

Rome, study in, 59-61 ; love 
of, 227. 

Rose, Sir John, 354, 356, 362, 

364- 

Russell, E. Harlow, on Sum- 
ner's oratory, 385-386. 

Russell, Earl, on Trent seizure, 
255, 272, 275, 277. 



San Domingo, 260 ; Grant's 
steps to further annexation 
of, 343 ; question before com- 
mittee and Senate, 350-352 ; 
commission appointed, 360 ; 
Sumner's speeches on, 351, 



360, 372; report of commis- 
sion, 37 j. 

Saulsbury, Sin. .tor, 277. 
Savage, Senator, 210, 219. 
Schurz, Carl, 51, n. 1 ; 25S, n. 
2 ; report on Southern states, 

3°3-3°4; 339. 373.405,413- 
414, 415, 432; eulogy on 
Sumner, 435. 

Scott, General Winfield, 239. 

Sculpture, Sumner's interest in, 
60-61 ; urges a higher stand- 
ard of, 407, n. I. 

Senate, Sumner's first impres- 
sions of, 40-41 ; reluctance 
to enter, 129 ; nomination 
and election, 130- 135 ; per- 
sonnel of, 140-141 ; Sum- 
ner's later attitude toward, 
227 ; reelection opposed, 263 ; 
manners in, 396-397. 

Seward, William II., 96 ; con- 
gratulates Sumner on elec- 
tion, 136, n. 2; 140 ; votes 
on Fugitive Slave Law, 157, 
180; opposes Kansas-Ne- 
braska Bill, 168; in Kansas 
debate, 192 ; moves commit- 
tee of inquiry on Brooks as- 
sault, 205 ; 209 ; keeps Sum- 
ner off Committee on Foreign 
Relations, 218; compromise 
programme, 239, 244 ; de- 
clares slavery will remain 
unaffected by the war, 247 ; 
approves Trent seizure, 252 ; 
on giving up Mason and 
Slidell, 254, 255, n. 1 ; at- 
tempted exclusion of, from 
cabinet, 266 ; favors letters 
of marque and reprisal, 268 ; 
approves Johnson's recon- 
struction acts. 20S ; blamed 
for Johnson's deeds, ; 1 i . 
quisition of Alaska by, jiS. 



464 



INDEX 



Seward, Mrs. William II., 142, 

"57- 

Sherman, John, 327 ; on Sum- 
ner's removal from chairman- 
ship, 367 ; opinion of Sumner, 

435- 
Simms, William G., 213. 

Sismondi, on American slavery, 
101. 

Slavery, 94; Sumner's first 
sight of, 100 ; « Slavery sec- 
tional," 148 ; impressions of, 
185; "The Barbarism of," 

233- 

Slave-trade, treaty for sup- 
pression of, 259 ; abolition of 
coastwise, 277. 

Slidell, John, declines to dine 
with Sumner, 74, n. I ; on 
Brooks assault, 205; 231; 
taken from Trent, 251. 

Smith, Gerrit, 308, n. 2. 

Smith, Sydney, Sumner's visit 
with, 55. 

Soule, Pierre, Sumner on, 140. 

South Carolina, part of, in revo- 
lution, 177; compared with 
Kansas, 197. 

Specie payments, Sumner urges 
prompt resumption of, 327, 

379- 

Speech, freedom of, Sumner 
champion of, 178. 

St. Thomas, proposed annex- 
ation of, 319. 

Stamp Act, compared with Fu- 
gitive Slave Law, 153, 174. 

Stanton, Edwin M., 243, 294, 

295- 
Stevens, Thaddeus, 248, n. I ; 

opposition to Johnson's plans, 
296-297 ; secures appoint- 
ment of Committee on Re- 
construction, 302 ; blames 
Sumner, 307 ; institutes 



" Thorough " policy, 315, and 

n. 3 5 3 2 4, 435» 443. 44°. 

Story, Joseph, friendship for 
the Sumners, 34 ; Sumner 
visits in Washington, 39 ; 41, 
46; opinion of Sumner, 51, 
n. 1; 61, 91, 94. 

Story, William Wetmore, char- 
acterization of Sumner, 37, 
68; 228 ; on Sumner's appre- 
ciation of art, 407-408. 

Style, Sumner's, in oratory and 
writing, 107, 385-386. 

Suffrage, educational or prop- 
erty tests for, 444. See Negro 
Suffrage. Woman's, 309. 

Sumner, Charles, birth, 22 ; at 
Latin school, 23 ; aspirations 
for West Point, 25 ; at Har- 
vard, 26-28 ; tramping trip 
to Saratoga, 29-30 ; Daniel 
Webster awards prize to, 32 ; 
experience in teaching, 33 ; 
chooses law as profession, 34- 
37 ; appearance and habits, 
36-37 ; contributes to Amer- 
ican Jurist, 37 ; visits Wash- 
ington, 39-41 ; distaste for 
politics and for Senate, 40— 
41 ; forms partnership with 
Hillard, 41 ; lectures in law 
school, editorial work, 42- 
43 ; the " Five of Clubs," 
44 ; European trip, 45-63 ; 
return to Boston, 63; new 
friends, 65-66 ; death of 
father, 66 ; resumes practice, 
66-69 ; edits Vesey's " Re- 
ports," 70-71 ; serious illness 
and despondency, 71-72 ; de- 
fends Commander Mackenzie, 
in Somers mutiny controversy, 
73 ; interest in phrenology, 
74 ; works with Horace 
Mann for improvement of 



INDEX 



4G5 



public education, 75-76 ; dis- 
gust with American political 
methods, 76 ; delivers ora- 
tion, " The True Grandeur 
of Nations," 80-89 ; eulogy 
of Judge Story, 91 ; lectures 
before Lyceums and colleges, 
92-93 ; address before Peace 
Society, 95 ; ostracized in 
Boston, for part in Prison Dis- 
cipline controversy, 96-98 ; 
allies himself with anti-slav- 
ery men, 100-102; contrib- 
utor to Daily Whig, 104 ; 
denounces Winthrop's Mex- 
ican War vote, 105-107 ; 
speech at state convention, 
109 ; denounces abduction of 
a fugitive slave, 1 10 ; refuses 
to accept nomination for Con- 
gress, ill; calls for with- 
drawal of troops from Mex- 
ico, 112; commends Pal- 
frey's vote, 113; part in 
organizing Free Soil party, 
116-118; defeated for Con- 
gress, 1 19 ; favors coalition 
with Democrats, 120, 125- 
126; defeated for Congress, 
123 ; defends Sims, a fugitive 
slave, 124; denounces Fugi- 
tive Slave Law, 127 ; nomi- 
nated for Senate, 130 ; dead- 
lock ends in his election, 
130-134; takes oath of office, 
138; treatment by colleagues, 
140; life in Washington, 141 ; 
welcome to Kossuth, 142 ; 
secures pardon of Drayton 
and Sayres, 143 ; favors 
land-grants to Iowa, 144 ; 
reproached for inaction, 145 ; 
attempt to address Senate 
thwarted, 146; speech, 
" Freedom national, Slavery 



sectional," 148-156; in Mas- 
sachusetts Free Soil Conven- 
tion, 160; Marshtield elects 
to constitutional convention, 
161 ; measures he favored, 
162; champions the revised 
constitution, 163 ; called upon 
to resign, 164; omitted from 
committee list, 165 ; signs 
"Appeal of the Independent 
Democrats," 167 ; opposes 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 167- 
173; champions New Eng- 
land clergy, 172; defends 
Massachusetts against charge 
of treason, 174; expulsion 
mooted, 176; asserts right 
of free speech, 17S; op- 
poses Toucey's bill, 184; re- 
jects Know-Nothingism, 186; 
buys slaves for John A. An- 
drew, 184 ; Western tour, 184; 
criticizes Douglas's report on 
Kansas, 191 ; speech, "The 
Crime Against Kansas," 193- 
199; colloquy with Douglas, 
199-200; assaulted by 
Brooks, 204 ; effects, 209 ; 
name put forward for V ice- 
President, 210; academic 
recognition, 214 ; public re- 
ception in Boston, 215-216; 
reelection, 217 ; goes to 
Europe for health, 221 ; re- 
sumes seat in Senate , 223 ; 
forced to return to Europe, 
224 ; treatment by moxa, 225, 
227 ; first attack of an^itiii 
pectoris, 226; winter in 
Montpellier, 227 ; Italian 
travel, 228-230; return 
home, 230 ; resumes seat in 
Senate, assigned to Foreign 
Relations Committee, 231 ; 
voted for in Chicago conven- 



466 



INDEX 



tion for presidency, 232; 
speech, " The Barbarism of 
Slavery," 234; Cooper Insti- 
tute speech, 236; lecture on 
" Lafayette," 237 ; opposes 
all schemes of compromise, 
240 ; believes war inevitable, 
241 ; criticized by Boston 
City Council, 242 ; made 
chairman, Committee on For- 
eign Relations, 244 ; hunted 
by Baltimore mob, 245 ; pro- 
poses programme for the 
administration, 247 ; urges 
emancipation on Lincoln, 
248, 251, 259; puts the issue 
before Massachusetts state 
convention, 249; on Trent 
seizure, 252, 255-257; sup- 
ports treaty for suppression 
of slave trade, 259 ; secures 
diplomatic recognition of 
Hayti, San Domingo and Li- 
beria, 260 ; succeeds in pass- 
ing anti-slavery laws, 260- 
261 ; begins struggle for 
equal rights, 261 ; propounds 
" state-suicide " theory, 261 ; 
opposes initiation of recon- 
struction by President, 262; 
introduces resolution as to 
battle-flags and paintings in 
Capitol, 262; supports legal 
tender acts, 263 ; reelection 
threatened, 263 ; endorsed by 
Republican convention, 264- 
265; reelected, 266; favors 
Seward's elimination from 
the cabinet, 266 ; on Confis- 
cation Act, 267 ; blocks reso- 
lution on French intervention 
in Mexico, 267-268; stops 
privateering policy, 268-269 ; 
resolutions on foreign inter- 
vention, 270 ; Cooper Insti- 



tute speech, 273-275 ; secures 
repeal of Fugitive Slave Law, 
276; urges equal rights meas- 
ures, 277-278; relation to 
Thirteenth Amendment, 278 ; 
proposes reform of civil serv- 
ice, 279-280 ; opposes renom- 
ination of Lincoln, 280 ; 
works for his reelection, 281 ; 
secures Chief- Justiceship for 
Chase, 281 ; on Taney me- 
morial, 281 ; secures modifi- 
cation of Retaliation Act, 
283; insists Congress must 
initiate reconstruction, 286 ; 
opposes recognition of Louis- 
iana government, 287-288 ; 
defeats Lincoln's plan, 289 ; 
escorts President and Mrs. 
Lincoln to inauguration ball, 
290; accompanies presiden- 
tial party to Richmond, 291 ; 
foresees break with Lincoln 
on reconstruction, 293 ; at 
Lincoln's death-bed, 293 ; 
eulogy on Lincoln, 294, 390 ; 
urges negro suffrage upon 
Johnson, 295 ; insists upon it 
as preliminary to reconstruc- 
tion, 299 ; breaks with John- 
son, 301 ; presents recon- 
struction programme, 301 ; 
denounces Johnson's " white- 
washing " message and ap- 
pointments, 304 ; blocks first 
form of Fourteenth Amend- 
ment, 306-307 ; offers new 
draft, 307 ; on committee on 
District of Columbia, 308 ; 
opposes hasty trial of Jeffer- 
son Davis, 309 ; blocks re- 
taliation against England, 
309-311; advocates interna- 
tional copyright and metric 
system, 31 1 ; death of mother, 



INDEX 



467 



311; marriage, 311, 402- 
403 ; denounces Johnson, 
312; urges extension of Ten- 
ure of Office Bill, 312 ; insists 
on negro suffrage in Ne- 
braska, 314; declares ac- 
ceptance of Fourteenth 
Amendment only an instal- 
ment of reconstruction, 315 ; 
successful appeal to caucus on 
negro suffrage, 316; tries to 
secure homesteads and schools 
for freedmen, 317; advocates 
Alaska purchase, 318— 319 ; 
Western lecture tour, 320 ; 
part in Johnson impeachment 
trial, 322-326 ; urges prompt 
resumption of specie pay- 
ments, 327 ; attitude toward 
Fifteenth Amendment, 328 ; 
opposed to Grant's nomina- 
tion, 329-330 ; elected for 
fourth term, 330 ; blocks ap- 
pointment of Stewart, 332 ; 
intimacy with Fish, 334; re- 
lation to Motley's appoint- 
ment, 336; opposes Johnson- 
Clarendon Convention, 337— 
338; tension over Motley, 
347 ; urged by Grant to sup- 
port San Domingo treaties, 
349 ; opposes annexation of 
San Domingo, 350-352; of- 
fered London mission, 352 ; 
antagonism toward Grant, 
359; speech, " Naboth's 
Vineyard," 360 ; insulted by 
Fish, 361 ; rupture with Fish, 
362-363 ; memorandum on 
terms of settlement with Eng- 
land, 363 ; removed from 
chairmanship of Committee 
on Foreign Relations, 365— 
371 ; third speech on San 
Domingo, 372-373 ; supports 



Treaty of Washington, 377 ; 
favors new " fundamental 
conditions " of reconstruction, 
380; urges changes in law of 
naturalization, 381 ; illness, 
382 ; opposes Butler's candi- 
dacy for governor, 383 ; per- 
sonality, 384-411; religious 
views, 398-399 ; secures of- 
fice for Hawthorne, 400-402; 
marriage and divorce, 402- 
403; home in Washington, 
403-405 ; lack of humor, 406- 
407 ; appreciation of art, 407- 
408; craving for approval, 
408-410; urged to join Lib- 
eral Republicans, 415 ; consid- 
ered as presidential candi- 
date, 416; speech, "Repub- 
licanism vs. Grantism," 418 ; 
last trip to Europe, 420-422 ; 
introduces " Battle-Flag Reso- 
lution," 423; censured by 
Massachusetts legislature, 
424; struggle to complete 
Works, 425 ; election to Mas- 
sachusetts Historical Society, 
426; renewed friendship with 
Hillard, 427, and n. I ; urges 
Civil Rights Bill, 429 ; favors 
Cushing for Chief-Justice, 
430; censure rescinded, 431- 
432 ; illness and death, 432- 
433; funeral ceremonies, 
433-434; Lamar's eulogy, 
436-437 ; Sumner's leader- 
ship, 438-451; part in re- 
construction, 441-448; prac- 
tical statesmanship, 448-451. 

Sumner, Charles Pinckney, 18; 
marriage, 19; sheriff of Suf- 
folk County, 20 ; character- 
istics, 21; anxiety as to son's 
education, 25; death, 66. 

Sumner, George, 66, 134, 24S. 



468 



INDEX 



Sumner, Job, 16-18. 

Sumner, Relief (Jacob), 22, 31 1. 

Supreme Court, Sumner's ob- 
servations of, 39; attitude 
toward its decisions, 152. 

Taney, Chief- Justice, 281, 
282. 

Tariff, Sumner's votes on, 218. 

Taylor, Zachary, nomination of, 
116, 117, n. I. 

Temperance, Sumner's relation 
to the movement, 74, 397. 

Tenure of Office Act, 312-313. 

Territories, organization of, 240, 
n. 1. 

Texas, opposition to annexation 
of, in Massachusetts, 99 ; 
Sumner on, 103. 

Thayer, Eli, and Emigrant Aid 
Company, 189. 

Thirteenth Amendment, Sum- 
ner drafts form of, 278 ; Mis- 
sissippi refuses to ratify, 299 ; 
powers under, 306. 

Tocqueville, A. de, 221, 222. 

Toombs, Robert, attitude to- 
ward Brooks assault, 205, 
207. 

Topeka Constitution, 190. 

Toucey, Isaac, 178, 183. 

Trent Affair, 251. 

Trumbull, Lyman, opp 
Seward, 266, 282, n. 1 ; 286, 
287, 3 6 9» 4I5- 

Vesey's " Reports," Sumner 

edits, 70-71. 
Victoria, Sumner present at 

coronation of, 53. 
Virginias case, Sumner on, 427- 

428. 

Wade, B. F., 140, 157 ; on 
freedom of speech and the 



Brooks assault, 208 ; 288, 297, 
308, 331, n. I; 361 ; favors 
annexation of San Domingo, 

373» n - i- 

War, Sumner's denunciation of, 
82-89, 94; changed attitude 
toward, 246. 

Washington, D. C, Sumner's 
first visit to, 39-41. 

Washington, George, on capture 
of fugitive slave, 154-155. 

Washington, Treaty of, 356. 

Webster, Daniel, awards prize 
to Sumner, 32 ; argues case 
before Supreme Court, 39 ; 
on Creole case, 102 ; urged 
by Sumner to champion 
freedom, 109, n. 1 ; Seventh 
of March Speech, 121-122; 
123; enforces Fugitive Slave 
Law, 124; last visit to Sen- 
ate, 156. 

Welles, Gideon, 8; on Trent 
Affair, 25 1-25 2 ; on privateer- 
ing, 269, 298. 

West Point, Sumner's wish to 
enter, 25 ; visits, 29. 

West Virginia, Sumner opposed 
to admission, 261. 

Whipple, E. P., 92. 

White, Andrew D., 358, n. 1 ; 
commissioner to San Do- 
mingo, 361 ; on annexation 
of San Domingo, 373, n. I. 

Whittier, John G., 102, 402 ; 
leads movement to rescind 
censure of Sumner, 424, 431. 

Wilkes, Captain, 251-252. 

Wilson, Henry, 103 ; at Phil- 
adelphia convention, 1 16 ; de- 
nounces Webster, 125; 130; 
credited by Sumner with his 
election, 136; 145, 147, 161 ; 
defeated for governor, 163, 
164; dallies with Know- 



INDEX 



4G9 



Nothings, 182 ; elected to 
Senate, 182 ; on conditions 
in Kansas, 190; 205, 208; 
declines duel with Brooks, 
212; on Brooks's death, 
219; 238; opposes Sumner's 
resolutions, 262 ; candidate 
for Vice-President, 417 ; 426, 
434- 



Winthrop, Robert C, 88, 104 ; 
vote on Mexican War Bill 
criticized, 104-107; Sum- 
ner's controversy with, 105- 
107; Sumner refuses to run 
against, for Congress, III ; 
opposed to Sumner in state 
convention, 113; appointed 
to Senate, 123 ; 388. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




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